


Right When It's Right - Part I

by Persephone



Series: Willing to Take the Risk [4]
Category: Valentine's Day (2010)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Backstory, Bradley Cooper - Freeform, Canon Gay Character, Canon Gay Relationship, Coming Out, Eric Dane - Freeform, Explicit Sexual Content, Hotel Sex, Hotels, Los Angeles, M/M, Rare Characters, Rare Pairing, Romance, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-28 13:54:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 30,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persephone/pseuds/Persephone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Train a session, play a season, arrange to be married. It was supposed to be that easy. Things are always simpler in theory.</p><p>
  <span class="small">
    <i>Note: Edited/extended Sept. 5. My apologies if the system alerted you about new chapters.</i>
  </span>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He was giving Paula his undivided attention. Or at least he thought he was.

Paula was filling him with details of his upcoming season, including a rundown of bonuses that were due his way once he reached a certain number of plays or kept his sacks down to a minimum. She was also going over the start of the preseason, and then the season itself, and when, per his contract, he was expected to be at the team’s disposal. Which, of course, was always.

He was nodding as she spoke, only vaguely taking in her words, but mostly taking in the sounds of the other diners in the restaurant.

His eyes kept wandering to the other side of the room and to a corner table in particular, where just a few short weeks ago he’d sat miserably nursing a drink, and Holden had walked in red-eyed from a fight with his father.

It had been the night that had changed everything, the night he felt he had finally won Holden over.

He took in the small table for two with the interior lighting hitting it at just the right angle, the chairs now occupied by two perfectly happy diners.

In the daylight it looked innocuous; the whole restaurant did. Nothing at all like the dark and ominous place in which he’d tried to come to terms with what he had then believed would be a very difficult life with Holden. 

But it had all worked out.

The problem was, that was then and this was now. Now he had other, more... personal things on his mind. Namely, separation. 

It was finally here.

A lot had gotten in the way of his thinking about it and what _it_ meant for him and Holden. But what it boiled down to was that after a grueling offseason in which he had done all he could to make things right between the two of them, the conclusion was for him to get separated from Holden. For six months.

For two days now he had been telling himself to go easy, that they could handle it like they had handled everything else that had been thrown their way. And that if Holden was good at anything it was handling things.

And on their side, in terms of chances of getting together, were bye-weeks and Christmas and Thanksgiving, holidays which this time around he would have Holden be a part of his family’s festivities if he had to drag him kicking and screaming. And then after Christmas, it was only a matter of holding his breath until mid- or late January, depending on how well his team performed in the season.

So there. All by himself he had all but figured out how they were going to survive the next few months. All he had to do now was present it to Holden, whom he was sure in his new, all-for-it approach to their relationship, would be amenable to it all.

He paused as he watched himself shove his food around his plate.

So why, if he had it all so wonderfully worked out, was he sitting here having an obviously desperate conversation with himself?

His mind, thankfully, was gentle as it offered up its truth.

_Because this was football season and there are— other things._

This was the time in which he left town and Holden...

Holden got to play.

“Sean, you’re not listening.”

“I’m listening.”

Paula resumed talking.

He lowered his fork and folded his hands. At that moment, Wolfgang, the restaurant’s celebrity chef owner and his self-proclaimed biggest cheerleader, showed up with their specially-made apéritif. He sat back with relief.

The lunch had been set for him by Paula’s office as a going away present, knowing his love for this guy and his talent for making food that made you feel not only happy, but truly special.

He smiled as the plates were placed before them, smiling as Paula, whose interest, coming off the kind of offseason he had had, in anything but his success was totally faked, expressed appropriate words of admiration.

Wolfgang started in on his annual farewell speech. The chef wasn’t always around when it came time for him to leave and sometimes had his other exec chefs deliver the speech, but it always got emotional. And Wolfgang’s carefully constructed words of advice—really thinly veiled threats on his opponents for the season—never failed to amuse him.

But this time as he picked up his fork and prepared to give his culinary verdict, trying to concentrate on not embarrassing himself when the brûlée would pop his tastebuds, he suspected that before this was all over his favorite chef wasn’t going to be the only one in need of a whole lot of TLC.

~*~

Holden had been asking persistent, increasingly personal questions of the sales associate from the moment they had walked into the wedding designer’s showroom.

It was still too early to start making decisions about the ceremony, but someone had recommended this place to Holden and Holden’s office being just down the road, they had met up in Beverly Hills after lunch.

Now after about ten minutes of the interrogation, the associat looked both flattered and genuinely confused. And who could blame her.

He had been telling Holden for years now that his approach to showing polite interest in other people’s lives was a little unusual, that unless they knew him personally, and could understand that it was partly from a need to answer questions in his own life—he didn’t tell Holden that last part, it only came off as either grossly bewildering or a massive come-on.

But Holden had never listened. And now he was watching yet another poor person get inadvertently romanced, as Holden had long since moved on from discussing the reasons they had entered the shop to Farrah’s—that was the sales associate’s name—own recent engagement to her boyfriend of six years.

Farrah kept shooting looks in his direction, as she was clearly trying to figure out what his role in this strange dynamic was, in which he was clearly part of the equation, and whether she was simply misreading things. He knew better than to get involved and didn’t make eye contact.

He only quietly enjoyed the scene, occasionally sneaking peeks to marvel at Holden’s ability to navigate the displays of china and crystals despite his enormous feet and his penchant for bumping into things.

He would miss this very much.

He’d spent the last few weeks not thinking about the next few months, but he was falling harder for Holden as Holden spent each passing day opening up to him a little more. But rather than give him comfort, as the day approached for him to leave it made his heart beat more painfully. Because the truth was that for three football seasons, he had cheated his own heart.

While on the road, he had regarded his relationship with Holden as being on “hold.” Meaning, while separated they had considered themselves free agents to do whatever, and whomever, they wished. Until the day he returned in January and they decided whether or not to resume their relationship, which they always did, neither of them could make any kind of claim over the other.

It had, of course, been based on Holden’s rules, and at the time he had acted as though it made sense. No one, after all, could control the actions of another, how much less from afar. 

And by and large it had worked. Holden had always been free to call him whenever he wished. Simply because he had nothing to hide; he had fallen in love and his heart had no longer been his to give. However, he himself had never been allowed to call without first being given a specific time to do so. And they had stuck with it for three years. Only once had he broken that rule and in return had received a slap from harsh reality, when one desperate night he had called without invitation and someone else had answered Holden’s phone.

Briefly closing his eyes, he looked away, no longer tracing monograms on guest registers as he waited for the pain that always accompanied that memory to pass.

It had been the first and the last time he had flaunted the rules. 

But Holden hadn’t been a hundred percent at fault, as he definitely shared half the responsibility for that asinine arrangement. And it certainly hadn’t all been bad. 

Holden had treated him like the only man in the world whenever they were together, and he had sometimes left voicemail that he would listen to over and over like the lyrics to the most beautiful song. Usually the messages were about having recently seen him in a photo spread in some men’s magazine and being reminded of what a gorgeous monster he was, where was he and when was he coming home, and in the meantime for him to “go get ‘em.”

Whenever he found himself suddenly facing a jarring moment, those adorable voicemails and the way Holden would look at him when he did finally return home, had been the things that had refused to let him close the book on their relationship.

And it was precisely because of that inability to forget that three years on his mind could now flood him with familiar and unsavory memories.

Familiar and unsavory _reminders._

He pushed at the guest registers and at his feelings at the hated word, wanting but never able to drop it from his mental vocabulary.

It was what this time of year was about. Reminders of him not being in L.A., being gone from Holden’s life and therefore without the right to speak. 

For years all he had wanted was to know why. Why Holden hadn’t felt the same way when his own heart had been so completely steamrolled. When their times together had been so unfailingly beautiful and he couldn’t have imagined being with someone else if his life depended on it.

The memories, those feelings, followed him around like eyes in the dark.

But after everything that had happened that summer, after Holden having said yes to _marrying_ him, he knew now what he had suspected back then: that Holden hadn’t trusted himself with the ability to maintain a commitment. Forget being on the same team, they hadn’t even been playing in the same game.

He dropped his hand and told himself to stop thinking about any of it. He was trying to rationalize stupidity, and there was simply the insistent begging of his heart to put it all out of his head no matter their reasoning at the time. He didn’t _want_ to understand any of it.

Holden finally began beckoning him over, and he acknowledged, going over with more relief than he would have cared to admit.

He placed his hand on Holden’s lower back as he reached him, nodding and making an effort to look interested when Holden started pointing out and explaining an array of lavender colored...stuff.

Murmuring equally appropriate sounds of interest, he pressed a kiss to Holden’s temple, and winked a little salaciously at the completely confused Farrah.

“A-are you the groom?” she asked unsteadily.

“Right,” he mouthed, while Holden obliviously nodded, saying chipperly, “We both are.”

“I-I see. Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” he said warmly.

“W-well, let me show you some more of our other options.”

He smiled, trailing Holden around, and taking a tragic amount of pleasure in being the long-suffering fiancé to Holden’s perfectionist bride-to-be. Though he’d have to stuff his own dirty socks in his mouth before voicing any such words to Holden.

And though Holden threw confounded looks at his slightly dopey stares, he paid no attention and only concentrated on mooching off as much sweetness as he could handle before he had to leave and face reality.

~*~

“All things being equal, would you rather do it sooner rather than later?” It was Holden speaking from the bedroom. “Or vise versa?”

He didn’t have to think about it. “I’d do it tomorrow if I could.”

There was silence from the other side. Even through the walls he could see the look Holden was giving him.

Seated on his living room couch, staring at the blank entry in journaling program, he snorted under his breath.

“We’re not getting married tomorrow,” Holden called quietly.

“I know, sweetheart. It’s just— you know I’m not one for those big events with hundreds of people. It’d be nice to just go down to the courthouse and get a license and do it.” He smiled at the thought. “Kinda sexier, you know?”

“Not really.”

“Aw, come on. You’re saying small and intimate doesn’t sound a whole lot better than big and loud?”

“It’s not happening, Sean, so stop trying to say it casually. There’d be thousands there if I knew that many people.”

He grimaced. He couldn’t help it.

“I saw that.”

Chuckling under his breath, he rubbed a finger across his temple, and continued staring at this frustrating hiccup in his plans. Journaling was always the last thing he had to do before heading down to San Diego.

And usually, it was easy. At summer’s end he would sit down and log the important events that had happened to him in the year. Events he felt had defined what the year meant to him: His first real salary bump, buying his house, the media ups and downs about his career; his sister’s pregnancy and his niece’s birth; the weekend he had met Holden. Even their breakups. It was all in there.

It was a surefire way to clear his head and get some perspective for the start of what was always a brutal football season. Otherwise, he would find himself entering the season feeling adrift among external opinions and risk facing mental struggles that could chip away at him.

Journaling discharged, he would then pack up the house, set up his housesitting services, and happily drive down to San Diego prepared for the football season.

And for six years he had successfully done it. 

But in this year, in which not merely life, but life changing things had happened to him, he found he couldn’t put a single word down, and it had in fact taken up most of his willpower just opening up the program.

What a joke life sometimes was.

It all felt too real, too raw, as if by typing out the words he would begin reliving the moments and get trapped inside the insecurities again.

He had procrastinated following his normal schedule for so long that Holden had noticed and had offered to help him pack, which was why Holden was in the bedroom.

The rest of the team, including nervous rookies looking to actually make the team, were already down at camp and had been for a few days. Coach Turner was giving veterans a little more leeway, expecting them to be in just as soon as they could, still he was pushing things, and had to light a fire under his ass before Paula tore him a new one.

They’d cleaned out his fridge, turned off his pool filtration system, talked to Gio next door—she had been _so_ happy to see Holden, who had blushed almost guilty, briefly piquing his interest. They had even deleted his TiVo queues. To make room for more shows whose presence in his queues he could never account for and certainly never watched, not the least of which was that show Holden made him sit through because Holden thought one of the doctors looked like him.

So all was done and all he had to do was perform this last act. Just start typing out his thoughts. 

He trailed his fingers back and forth across the track pad, and after a moment called toward the bedroom.

“What if we did it on one of those South Pacific islands? You know, one of those paradise hideaways you’re always selling for all that money?”

Silence greeted his words.

“You, me, a gorgeous sunset on the ocean...” He lowered his voice seductively. “The warm sand beneath our feet? That hot, sweet smell of tropical flowers... Hotter sex afterwards?”

Crickets were chirping.

After a moment, Holden said, minimally, “I like the sex part.”

He laughed to himself. “So that’s a yes?”

“That’s a definite no. No beach wedding, no justice of the peace wedding, no getting married while jumping out of an airplane. It’s a full-on traditional wedding for you, big guy. So learn to live with it.”

His smile expanded while he tapped idly on the keys, liking the way his cock responded to Holden calling him “big guy.”

Deciding he was having a much better time teasing Holden, than trying to sort out his feelings, he asked casually, “Are you open to a suggestion?”

“Sure.”

“How ‘bout... you come out here and sit in my lap, and we can discuss this without having to talk from different rooms.”

The silence resumed.

“You know,” he said evenly. “Man to man.”

“Is that meant to confuse me?” Holden asked eventually.

“I don’t know. Are you confused?”

“About why we’re still having this conversation, yes.”

He went on smiling, by this time reduced to just striking and deleting random letters. “If you loved me you’d do it.”

And this time he felt an answering smile through the wall.

“Would I?”

“Yeah. And fuck a beach wedding, you’d go all the way. Let go of all your worldly possessions and move into a mountaintop cabin in Kauai with me.”

Holden had started laughing very quietly.

“There’d be no running water or electricity, and we’d have to set bear traps just to be safe at night.”

“There are no bears in Hawaii,” Holden said, amidst his laughter.

“Doesn’t matter. It’d be us against something. We’d sleep on a tiny cot and breathe each other’s air, and stare into each other’s eyes, and nothing would make sense unless we said it to each other.”

Holden was falling apart in there, his quiet gasps carrying through the open doorway.

“And what would we do for takeout?”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “You haven’t been listening, sweetheart.”

“Oh, right. We’d be living off our love.”

“There you go.”

He listened to the sound of his sweetheart’s laughter and wondered what was so difficult.

Moving the cursor to the top of the screen, he took a slow, deep breath and tapped the cursor into position.

Then he sat there staring at the blinking vertical line.

 _He loves me,_ he told himself firmly. _And football season can’t change that._

Holden spoke quietly from the bedroom. 

“You shouldn’t want to deprive your family of the joy of seeing you get married, Sean.”

“ _My_ family?” he said in surprise.

He had somehow kept his voice to a mutter, thankfully. Louder, he said, “My family’d be okay with whatever I wanted.”

“No they wouldn’t. They’d say that, but trust me, they’d be a little hurt.”

He tilted his head, silently absorbing the logic of that. Holden had a better gauge for people’s needs anyway, so he was probably right. But besides which, he was pretty sure his sister would murder him if he got married and then told her about it.

“I’m almost done in here,” Holden said.

“Sounds good.”

“Are you almost done out there?”

“Y..eah.”

He trailed his fingers over the keys.

Then, of their own accord, his eyes drifted to the upper right corner of the screen, to where the entires for the previous years were situated. Specifically, to 2007. 

He stared at the date entry boxes, his heart beating steadily. Then slowly, helplessly, he slid his fingers, and the cursor, across to the month of October.

He knew the precise date, could even hear the buzzing on the other end of the line as the phone rang. What he couldn’t understand was why he was about reliving it.

Tapping the date, he waited, still as stone, as a small window popped up containing a brief entry:

_He had another guy there. I shouldn’t have done that._

He rubbed his temple, staring at the words. He took a deep breath.

Just then Holden came out of the bedroom, and glanced at him as he headed into the kitchen.

“You need some more time?”

“Nope. TiVo’s all set.”

“’Kay. Hey… do you still have that— you know the show with the—”

“All queued up and ready to go.”

“Perfect.”

He tapped at the keys, half listening to Holden rummaging through mostly empty cupboards. All that was left to snack on, Holden’s regular mission in any kitchen, were the gourmet cookies from Whole Foods he had bought earlier and which Holden swore by. He’d find them soon enough. 

He turned his attention back to his laptop. At this point he had to put something down, anything, otherwise he’d go into the season feeling unsure.

He created an entry for August 4th and typed:

_A lot has happened but I’m still here. And he’s still with me._

He looked at the words. Yeah, they felt right.

He closed the laptop and set it aside with a sigh of relief, ignoring the voice inside him deriding what an utter cop-out that entry had been.

Picking up the TiVo remote, he settled lower into the couch.

All of a sudden Holden appeared at his side, bumping his knee into the coffee table in an effort to sit down. The table wasn’t anywhere close to begin with. Bite-sized chocolate chip cookies sloshed from his bowl. 

Holden moving within a confined space being a tricky proposition of avoiding getting clobbered, he sat still and waited, focusing on locating the right buttons on the way-too-complicated remote.

When the commotion finally died down Holden had arranged himself in his favorite position—up against the armrest with his legs coming across his thighs. He was now busy picking through the cushions for his cookies. He glanced over to see if he could help, and froze.

He blinked, not sure if he was seeing things. 

The coy smile on Holden’s face assured him he was not.

Holden was wearing a San Diego Chargers T-shirt. A football T-shirt. Cobalt blue, yellow, and with the white thunderbolt streaking across the front, Reebok logo stitched into the sleeve.

Holden had the short sleeves rolled up, the Reebok logo hidden, but he could have reeled off the style and stock number, the availability of the T-shirt, in his sleep.

His thoughts scattered.

Instantly pulled back into the past, he was, for the hundredth time after a game, standing at the T-shirt section of the team store, staring at the piles of dark and light blue cotton blends. Stuck fast, he had been fantasizing about seeing his elusive boyfriend in one of those things, looking beautifully like someone’s property, and possibly waiting for that someone to come strip it off him… while whispering all the things his desperate boyfriend longed to hear.

And then the memories fast forwarded to the one time he had actually had the guts buy one, to give it to Holden… and the weary, wary look Holden had instead given him as his reward.

He now stared at Holden, at a total loss.

“Nothing to say?” Holden asked, dropping his cookies one by one into the bowl without looking at him.

“Uhh…”

The T-shirt had molded itself to Holden’s torso like it was carefully reading his thoughts, the dark blue making his eyes stand out in a way that was just plain wrong.

Holding his bowl close, Holden then leaned forward and reached for the coffee table, so that he was able to see the back.

The back of the T-shirt had his name and number on it.

He felt himself actually go stupid.

Was Holden trying to—

“Could you give me a hand with this, please?”

He dragged his eyes from the T-shirt to see what Holden was doing. Holden was having trouble pulling the coffee table towards them.

He mindlessly reached forward and pulled it over.

“Thanks,” Holden said, sitting back with a smile.

Holden placed the bowl on his stomach—not on the coffee table—and let his knees slowly drop open.

He stared in burning silence.

“You don’t have to sit there pretending you’re not turned on, you know,” Holden said playfully, ignoring the swelling between his own legs. “You can come over any time you want and put your hands up my T-shirt.”

Eyes shining into him, Holden picked up a cookie and popped it into his mouth, while he stared between Holden’s legs and T-shirt, trying to locate his higher faculties. “I know how you jocks like that.”

He pushed Holden’s legs from his thighs and plowed over.

“Careful of the cookies!” Holden cried, yanking his bowl toward his chest and sinking into the cushions, trying to repress his laughter. And when he obviously wasn’t going to, he cried, “Sean, stop! What’re you doing? You’re gonna crush all my cookies!”

He was having trouble speaking, shaking from the way Holden was writhing under him, accommodating him nonetheless, while he got between his legs and shoved his hand up the T-shirt, gritting his teeth when he felt Holden’s warm, aroused cock pressing into his stomach.

Holden’s darkened blue eyes shot up at him. “Should I take it off?” he half whispered, half laughed.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he bit out, by way of trying to give an answer. His shoulder bumped into the bowl. Cookies went flying.

“Sean!” Holden wailed, scrambling to save his cookies. But Holden, lying against the sofa’s armrest, had his head thrown back and was laughing so hard he was crying. “The store’s closed! Can I at least put the bowl down!” All of Holden’s writhing had only made it worse. He had fisted the T-shirt and had Holden’s sweatpants coming off as fast as he could manage it. Then he bent and took in all of Holden’s cock in one swallow.

“Oh, God!” Holden howled, jerking and sending cookies raining all over his back. “Sean, you’re lucky I like you!”

One hand gripping Holden’s sweatpants, he pulled the T-shirt over his head, cocooning himself completely, and slid his tongue along Holden’s shaft, licking fast, then groaning hard, as he was already fantasizing about what it was going to look like when he did Holden from the back.

Holden turned the bowl over on his back, gripping his jersey with his other, and made frantic, encouraging noises as he rocked under him.

None of the cookies were going to make it.

~*~

On his back later on, lying against the warmth of Holden’s chest, he savored the last night of his 2010 offseason.

Offered an alternative, he couldn’t have thought up a better way to spend it.

The cookies were decimated and gone. Holden was re-attired in his sweats—the T-shirt had proved perfect in its stretchiness in his grip, had acquitted itself after years of being the focus of a fantasy—and was stroking his hair in an absent lull while staring unblinkingly at the screen.

“He looks exactly like you,” Holden was saying in a whisper, above his head, his voice soft with wonder. “Don’t you think?”

He stared disinterestedly at the actors on the screen, Holden’s heartbeat beneath his cheek the only thing he had been following.

“No?” Holden prompted, when he hadn’t said anything.

“He looks nothing like me,” he murmured, the thought making him chafe a little. “He’s got a beard, is all.”

But he could tell Holden was still staring in fascination at the screen. He had been it seemed for all the times they had done this. 

“I don’t know how you can say that,” Holden said softly.

He let the subject evaporate. There were other things on his mind.

Separation, at last, was here front and center.

Packed up and done, in the morning he’d be gone.

But since first facing it during his lunch with Paula, he had been doing some thinking. And it was now or never.

But he had to broach the subject carefully. That much he knew by now.

He had come up with a way they might be able to make the next six months easier, but he knew that if he made getting together over this period sound like an obligation owed to him, or to their relationship, Holden would lash out, despite Holden’s desire to do the right thing. And then he would get a demonstration of how putting on a T-shirt didn’t mean taking on everything else in a person’s life.

It was only fair. He had never rearrange his life during the offseason to follow Holden around on business trips just so they could be together, and neither had Holden ever expected him to. So he couldn’t start acting as though _his_ turn was the more important.

What he would do was be mature about it. He would ask Holden down for an afternoon at training camp, just a few hours to spend some time with him and make the transition less abrupt, and if Holden wasn’t bored within seconds and longing for civilization, then he would propose a weekend, and they could go from there.

And who knew? Before long Holden might be at every Sunday game he was playing, as well as down in San Diego spending NFL Tuesdays-off with him.

Okay, maybe that was a bit much. But the answer laid in moving the ball down-field one yard at a time. Training camp was the perfect way to start.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that the room had gone silent, the quiet dialogue from the TV the only sounds in the room. 

He glanced up at Holden to find him staring curiously down at him.

“I miss something?”

Holden slowly shook his head. “I just said I think I prefer their old uniforms.”

“Oh.”

He shifted, Holden relaxing and releasing him, so that he moved into a sitting position at the other end of the couch. He set himself up as comfortably as he could before speaking.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, catching the words as they flew through his mind. “You care to come down to training camp for a night or so?”

“Sure.”

About to launch into his justification, he stopped and looked at Holden.

“What?” Holden asked, suspiciously.

“You’d do that even though you hate football?”

Holden gave him an indulgent look. “I don’t hate football,” he said. “I just don’t care to watch it. But I’ll come down, no problem. Cheer you on and all that.” He gave an easy shrug. “I’m a pro with jocks. Can’t you tell?”

He relaxed in slow increments. “That… that would be great.”

He basked in the quick and easy victory, overcome by internal relief.

After some moments of more silence, he looked at Holden. Holden was watching him with still, direct, and openly curious eyes.

“We good?” he asked evasively.

“Why are you hesitating to ask me something like that when we’re getting married?” Holden asked quietly.

He fell silent.

“You’re going to be only two hours away,” Holden pointed out. “I plan on seeing you as often as I can, not just at Christmas or whenever.” Holden paused, then said, “You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” he said immediately, and thought, _And by often you mean…?_

“So why’d you just say that?”

He stared at the moving images of people on the screen. Once again, the actors’ were the only sounds in the room.

“Sean.”

“I don’t know why I said it, sweetheart,” he heard himself saying, and then for God only knew what reason, added, “Once bitten, twice shy, I guess.”

A whole new kind of silence descended on them. This one deadened the sounds from the TV.

It stretched on.

Without looking at Holden, he silently and viciously cursed himself

 _What_ the fuck had he just said.

Holden slowly turned back to the TV. “Okay,” he said blandly.

“Fuck me, that came out wrong,” he whispered.

“It’s fine.”

He found he couldn’t speak around the way his heart was tearing twice as fast against his chest. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“I said it’s okay, Sean.”

Slowly, he shifted until he was back on Holden’s body, pressing his face into Holden’s neck and squeezing his eyes shut. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that. As if— as if I don’t—” he swallowed, trying again. “What I mean is that I didn’t mean to make it sound as if you’re not— I mean I trust you completely, Holden, I trust that—” He turned his face into the cushions. “God _damn_ it.”

“Sean, it’s fine. I get it. I didn’t exactly spend three years making you feel comfortable about our relationship, and now you’re going back into the football season and it’s perfectly understandable that you’re feeling this way.”

“No, it’s nothing like—”

“Sean, I promise you it’s okay.” Holden shifted, making him move so that Holden was now was gazing down at him. Still, he didn’t bring his face from the cushions, didn’t turn to make eye contact.

“You know I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true, right?”

He nodded without looking, feeling his face getting warmer by the minute.

Holden didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he relaxed against the cushions and gently ran his fingers through his hair. “My feelings aren’t hurt,” he said kindly. “I know what I put you through and I know it’s not going to go away overnight. So don’t beat yourself up just because you have residual anger over it.”

“I don’t have—” but he stopped.

And then he was cringing so hard he couldn’t breathe, because Holden hadn't interrupted. He had simply stopped himself.

“You still might,” Holden countered gently, matter-of-factly.

He tightened his grip on Holden’s T-shirt, enduring another hard flush, while Holden cupped his face, bent and planted a soft kiss on his cheekbone, beneath his eye.

“Sean, it’s totally okay that you feel this way,” he said softly. “If anyone needs to be doing any apologizing, it’s me for not acknowledging what I was putting you through. Sean, I knew you were different the first time we sat down together, but I was too caught up in my own bullshit to care.”

“Holden, _I’m_ sorry,” he said with finality. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but this isn’t how I feel. I’m good. _We’re_ good. You believe me, right?”

“Of course, Sean, always.”

They both were quiet.

“All right, look,” he murmured. “How ‘bout you tell me something about me you’re not cool with. I think that’d make me feel better.”

Holden started to laugh. “That’s not how it works.”

“Please just do it.”

He felt Holden smiling against his temple. There was a pause. Then, roughly, hesitantly, Holden said into his ear, “You make me think too much, Sean Jackson.”

He stilled. But before he could ask what him to elaborate, Holden laughed. “And no,” Holden said. “That’s not in response to your question.”

~*~


	2. Chapter 2

Once bitten, twice shy?

What the _fuck_ had he been thinking?

Bent over catching his breath on the field, he shrank internally from the words while waiting for their offensive coach to call a reset in play. Around him players hustled back into position.

Had that asinine remark been designed to make Holden feel better about their relationship? About how far they had come? For the love of God he needed to be more careful about how he phrased himself.

Coach blew the whistle and he caught a fresh ball tossed to him. Offensive linesmen locked into their positions while defensive players trotted in place, eager to stop his offensive momentum.

He got behind center and checked the line left and right, and called the play. The ball snapped into his hands. He caught it and fell back, scanning the field and finding his receiver exactly where he needed him. He sent the ball hurtling in Crayton’s direction, held his breath the endless seconds before Crayton snatched it out of the air, then released his breath and went limp as he was slammed to the ground.

Flat on his back, he stared up at the perfect blue of the San Diego sky, feeling ravaged and torn apart from the brutality of drills, and more physically alive than he had felt all year. It was going to be a brutal football season.

He waited for Castillo to roll off him, who at six-three, two-ninety, had an inch and seventy pounds on him and loved to take him down. Paula had been right of course. Back when they had been holding out in negotiations with the team, she had promised him that a bump in pay would make his teammates not only respect him more but expect more of him. Castillo, one of their showstopper defensive tackles, had also been the player to ask “Where’s the controversy?” when the photos of him kissing Holden at the GLAAD Awards had turned the world upside down.

The team wanted one thing and one thing only, and that was to make it to the Super Bowl. Beyond that, his coming out seemed to exist in an arena that was outside their domain. Getting them to the Super Bowl was, indeed, all he was here for.

Castillo wheeled off him and reached down a hand, which he grabbed and leveraged himself to spring to his feet.

“We’re gonna make a player outta you yet, old man,” Castillo called back at him, striding back to the defensive line.

“It’ll take a better man than you, Cassie.”

Castillo howled and clapped his hands, breaking into a sprint. Grinning, he positioned himself back in his offensive line, watching keenly as the play was once again reset.

Holden wasn’t his problem. He _had_ no problems, because he had fixed them all. He was out as a gay man in the NFL and to the world and had dealt with the fallout to his career. And still had a job. He had won the hand of the man he loved against some very steep odds, and was now intended to be married to him before the spring was out.

From here, all that was expected of him was to play some football and earn the pay his agent had fought so hard for. 

He needed to concentrate on the future. And his was a good one.

He just had to remember that.

~*~

“He’s not going to be upfront about it, you know.”

Speaking in confidential tones, as though sharing a tried and true professional secret, Alastair finally said what had been preoccupying him since they sat down. He buttered his scone, saying nothing, and placed his knife back on the side dish.

His father’s eyes pinned him over the rims of his glasses, his eyebrows arched in expectation.

The look wouldn’t subside. So he replied.

“What do you want me to do about it?” he asked, somehow managing to keep his tone unaffected. “What would you like me to say?”

“I’d like you to say at least you’re listening to me,” his father responded, lowering the documents he had brought to him. Alastair’s eyes narrowed. “You believe me don’t you?”

“What would you know about it?” he couldn’t help asking.

“I know how men get when they’re away from their families. I know how pro athletes are. Have you any idea what temptations are thrown their way? What they get up to in those hotel rooms?”

He at first didn’t respond. Then he impertinently said, “You mean like I used to get up to when Sean was away?”

“You weren’t together then,” Alastair instantly dismissed. “You said so yourself.”

“Weren’t we?” he asked.

Alastair went silent, staring at him. Alastair was obviously trying to gauge his level of vulnerability.

He chewed on the buttered scone—Scottish oat, his favorite—and swallowed, finished it, and reached for another one.

“How’s Darren, by the way?” he asked blandly, and didn’t care when his father totally ignored him.

Which made them even, as he had as much interest in engaging in his father’s line of conservation as his father had in updating him on the affairs of one of his mother’s den roosters.

In the silence that ensued, while his father continued to look over the documents, he thought about the real problems he was having.

Sean had been gone at training camp for nine days, and for nine days he had spent an inordinate amount of time wandering his penthouse, slowly rousing to the reality that Sean was gone until January—and it was only August, and wondering just how he was meant to survive the coming months. He couldn’t remember what it was he had done with himself for three years. Denial really was a powerful thing.

It seemed incomprehensible that Sean wasn’t in Malibu. He thought about it a hundred times a day before remembering each time that that was the case.

He couldn’t simply go up to Malibu whenever he felt like it. He couldn’t call Sean and tell him he was at his house, and where was he, because Sean had gone to the grocery store since he hadn’t actually told him he was coming. 

He couldn’t wake up in the middle of the night sweating from a load of six-foot-two, two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle arousing and suffocating him at the same time, making him wonder at the things that turned him on these days.

But most of all, he couldn’t feel as though he was constantly laughing inside just for being together in the same room.

What was he supposed to do with all the love that was filling up inside him? Where was he supposed to put it?

Those were the problems pressing on his mind each night, very real ones, not the fiction his father was trying to concoct.

The idea of Sean cheating on him was so ludicrous that he couldn’t even entertain it, not even for the satisfaction of wrecking his father’s transparent attempts at staying relevant in his life.

But the truth was that it wasn’t really about Sean. His father’s interest lay somewhere much more self-serving .

Time and distance had helped him accept some of the things that had happened over the summer. Not all of it, but enough to know that he would only be continuing his father’s games if he went along with these manufactured concerns.

His father liked Sean, admired him even, for Sean’s self-possession he guessed, and if Alastair thought that Sean would sleep around on the road it was because he wished Sean would. That way they could get together and exchange war stories on being better men, or whatever it was his father equated sexual infidelity with.

No, his father’s concern sure as hell wasn’t for the sanctity of his engagement. What Alastair really wanted was a way in through Sean, to maintain an open pipeline to his son, and to eventually watch him cave on this proletariate and naïve notion that he was somehow different from the rest of them.

If he could go running back to Alastair’s side and be the son he could be proud of, a worthy heir and successor who knew better than to play by society’s low-class rules, then all would be well in Alastair Wilson’s world. But right now all Alastair could do was watch the so-called legacy of his ideas slip away.

And he couldn’t even hate the man responsible for it.

“I don’t understand why, on the one hand,” Alastair now began saying, “you profess to want this relationship to work, and on the other you’re unwilling to listen to anything I have to say.”

“Dad,” he said tiredly, “give it up.” And, because it felt good, “You lost a bet, that’s all.”

“I haven’t _lost_ the bet,” his father immediately bit back. “There’s still plenty of time for things to go wrong.”

Blinking, he caught his reaction to the nastiness of the remark

Wordlessly, he let the tension hang in the air, and focused his attention on pouring himself more coffee. 

He ignored his father taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Holden, I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he asked. “Being yourself?”

“That—came out wrong.”

The words unexpectedly froze him, his eyes flying to his father’s face. But before Alastair could notice, he recovered just as quickly and looked away.

Placing the coffee pot carefully on the table, he swallowed and blinked again.

He needed to calm himself. It was mere coincidence that the same phrase, after hurtful words, had come from the two men who meant most to him in the world, and within days of each other.

Keeping his eyes averted, he picked up and sipped his coffee, feeling more in control. Nope, mere words weren’t going to frighten him anymore. People said that phrase all the time, and if it felt like someone had walked over his grave, it was surprise and nothing more.

Having replaced his glasses, Alastair let out a quiet sigh. “What I meant was that—”

“I know what you meant.”

His father, perhaps hearing the strain in his voice, peered at him. “Holden, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine.”

“Son—”

“I said I’m fine.”

His father went quiet. And when he looked up, Alastair was somehow managing to look hurt.

His heart hurting, he turned away in annoyance. 

He shouldn’t have to feel ashamed of his behavior knowing he had done nothing wrong. But it was upsetting to find emotions still here that he thought he had won out against the night of their fight. 

It was upsetting to know that his father could so easily find and push buttons so hidden, even he didn’t know they were there.

Alastair had pulled back his attention to the documents. They were the proposed funding options for Sean’s foundation he had brought from their family accountants. 

Putting his glasses back on, Alastair peered at the papers. “The launch of his foundation did impressive business,” he acknowledged, then shook his head. “People love pro athletes.”

“Or children.”

Alastair glanced at him over the top of the documents, a look he unexpectedly recognized for having given himself on the occasions when Sean had thoroughly tried his patience, and only his undying love for the man had prevented him from strangling him.

He lowered his eyes to the black liquid of his coffee.

“You did a fine job of putting his board together,” Alastair calmly clarified. Then he said, “Well done, son.”

“Thank you.” 

His words had been nothing more than a murmur. He picked up another scone and tried it, but it was tasteless now. He put it back down.

“I really am sorry, Holden. For… some of the things I said.”

_Wonderful._

The papers lowered once more. Alastair bolted his gaze on him, though he was still looking at his coffee. “Son, you know I love you. More than my own life. All I want is for you to be realistic in your expectations. I don’t want to see you get— Holden, look at me.”

He reluctantly raised his eyes.

Alastair said slowly, “Holden, if you ever find yourself with the need, or if he so much as _looks_ at you in the wrong way, you don’t hesitate to come to me. Do you understand?”

He looked away. But he nodded.

Alastair went back to the papers, this time only shuffling through the remainder, briefly reading some of them.

Suddenly he heard himself speaking. “I’m— I’m actually going to San Diego in the morning. To see him at their training camp.”

“Oh, good. Send him my regards, would you?”

He swallowed his words and kept his eyes averted, and tamped the confused feelings rising inside him. 

He hoarsely said, “Sure,” and put down his coffee, no longer liking the taste.

~*~


	3. Chapter 3

It turned out Chargers training camp was that feeling that came over him whenever he thought of jock heaven.

The field itself was a wide expanse of land—well, the size of a football field—behind a state of the art steel and glass facility. A length of parking lot occupied the area between the building and the field. There he had parked, stared a little disbelievingly toward the field, then casually let himself out of his car to follow the happy trail of fans come to and from waving paraphernalia.

Soon he was standing behind a waist-high chain link fence—sticking out like a sore thumb in a slate sports jacket and slacks amidst a group of fans wearing team T-shirts and hats and waving 8x10 photographs—watching the absolutely wonderful show.

If all these men really were down here thinking about nothing but playing football like Sean insisted, then they really were all working too hard.

But even as he tried to grasp the free, fun show he was getting as he stared out into the field, something had suddenly set his mind blaring like a firehouse alarm. 

Staring at Sean standing on the sidelines with a group of other players, he realized that he had never seen Sean, in the flesh, in a football uniform.

High resolution images had failed him.

In the yellow afternoon sun, standing in the midst of a small group of casually talking players, Sean looked like a computer generated image of the physically perfect athlete. And then he was grinning.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t even bat an eyelash, as he stared, eloquently thinking, _Oh, fuck me, this is surreal,_ while he waited for Sean to look over and see him.

When Sean finally saw him, Sean, to his slight exasperation, looked completely surprised.

Considering that they had planned for him to be there, he thought the look rather unwarranted. Hadn’t Sean believed he would do it?

But he forgot all about it when Sean excused himself from the group and began jogging over.

And as Sean approached one thing became very, very clear.

Sean looked very different.

Aside from appearing…bigger, Sean’s skin had gone from a light tan to a golden brown, from being out all in day in all-but Mediterranean San Diego sun, and it had done so in a way that he had never seen in L.A. His hair and beard were sun-bleached, so that he looked almost Scandinavian, and matched the layer of golden fur now glinting on his arms.

His gaze thankfully hidden behind sunglasses, he looked past the stretchy, high tech material of the navy formfitting jersey, to take in the skin-tight white football pants, spray-painted on and stopping just below Sean’s knees to show gleaming, muscled calves.

He started feeling funny in a way he hadn’t in a really, really long time.

Sean slowed down his jog to a stroll, until he stopped a few feet from him, where he stood clutching his helmet to his thigh and grinning at him like a kid on the playground.

After baffled moments, during which he tried not to flinch at the sudden eruption of screams around him, he realized that Sean was being shy about showing a public display of affection toward him.

This from the man who had given him tongue in a hall full of media photographers.

But he understood the differing circumstances and merely smiled back. Reaching for pens and autograph books being shoved his way, Sean gave him a private little flicker of a smile, a thanks, that sent his pulse racing idiotically, before turning his focus on signing.

While he tried to not look affected, he saw, for one brief moment, a flash from the past. He suddenly saw Sean standing at the charity fundraiser at which they had met, surrounded by a small crowd. 

He had been trying then too not to appear that he was drooling in anticipation, while he had waited for the Hollywood agent who had introduced them to pull Sean away. And it wasn’t until this moment that he realized that it had been a group of fans back then too.

But he was remembering the feeling he had gotten staring at Sean’s profile, thinking that if he played his cards right he might actually get to go home with _that._

And now here Sean was. His. 

It was as if he had time-travelled to the best possible version of his future. And he could stay here bearing the knowledge he had brought with him from the past.

Sean handed back pens and photographs, ruffled the heads of a couple of kids, and then finally turned to him.

“Hi,” Sean said softly, walking slowly over, looking at him like a stranger about to pick him up in a bar.

“Hi back at’cha,” he said lightly, wondering how he was managing to speak.

Sean’s light eyes, his even lighter lashes now, batted softly at him. 

Sean jerked his head. “C’mere, I want you to meet a couple of the guys.”

Looking in the direction Sean had indicated, he saw a gate a few feet down along the fence. A security guard stood at it. 

He stepped back and the fans parted around him, feeling a bit guilty as some of the kids gave him mopey, envious looks. 

The guard opened the gate, waving a hand when Sean thanked him.

He walked through, Sean smiled his shy smile at him, then indicated that they head down toward the sidelines.

The group that Sean had been standing with turned to watch their approach.

The coaches, easily distinguishable from the players, wore loose navy jerseys and track pants with the stylized _Chargers_ on the front and down the legs, and one of them especially, the quarterback coach Sean later told him, lit up at the sight of them.

“Guys,” Sean said grandly as they arrived. “This is Holden.” It almost made him laugh. Sean sounded so proud.

He took off his sunglasses, smiling, and shook their hands.

“Hey, he’s prettier than you, Sean,” someone said, prompting laughter from the gathered men.

And to his mild surprise, two of the six men shifted uncomfortably. He quickly glanced over, but Sean appeared oblivious.

So when it was time to shake the two men’s hands, he was sure to make eye contact, wanting them to understand that their problem was visible, and that it was a one-way street.

He stepped back to Sean’s side with a smile, noticing that the quarterback coach had caught their little three-man play. And to his surprise, he got a narrow-eyed, almost imperceptible nod in recognition.

He smiled back. It seemed Sean had a fan. But he was just happy that more than half a random sampling of Sean’s colleagues seemed genuinely thrilled to meet his better half, as they were freely calling him.

There were the usual questions of what he did for a living, how the drive had been down from L.A., and Sean’s attention was pulled away. Within a short time, however, a stream of players began showing up and shaking his hand.

While he tried to keep names and faces straight, the men introduced themselves and began asking a barrage of questions, about him, about Sean, and he did his best to answer them, frankly startled by their open friendliness. Then Sean turned around, saw them, and hurried over.

“All right, break it up, guys,” Sean said firmly, waving them away like shooing flies. “Get outta here, will ya?”

The players dispersed while snickering, some of them outright laughing, then, when it was clear that Sean wasn’t going to let them stay, trotted back to their sides of the field.

The men with them tightened their lips. It was likewise clear that they were amused by the incident.

He looked questioningly at Sean, who, hovering beside him, had dropped his eyes and was now shaking his head. He noticed also that Sean had started blushing.

“Sorry about that,” Sean mumbled, moving closer and leaning in. “They’re just fishing for something to fuck me with later, is all.”

“Oh,” he mouthed, not really sure what that entailed.

But by now, around them, even the coaches were trying not to laugh.

“Those fuckers,” Sean muttered, turning and squinting in the direction of the retreating men. Sean was turning even an darker shade of red. He was surprised that it could show up beneath his gorgeous tan.

He turned to the coaches, smiling. “Anything I should know about what’s in store for him?”

The coaches’ smiles widened, then the began hiding their grins behind their hands. A couple of players shook their heads, struggling not to laugh.

Sean’s embarrassment only worsened. “Don’t worry about it, Holden,” Sean said in a clear voice. “Some of these guys are zoo animals. They just don’t have any boundaries.”

The men doubled over, clutching their thighs.

Finding it amusing, because now he got it, and knowing what a lack of boundaries entailed in jock life, he smiled at Sean. “Well, listen,” he said in a soft but carrying tone. “Don’t let ‘em get to you, Sean. I don’t know about fishing, but I’m pretty sure that when it comes to fucking, you’re probably getting more done before breakfast than they’re gonna be able to do all season.”

The men around them froze.

Their eyes flew to Sean’s face, which was startled to say the least.

“Am I right, Sean?” he prodded, smiling.

It was ballsy, but it got the job done.

The men saw the hazing of their quarterback by his own gay boyfriend for what it was, the thing the other players hadn’t gotten their chance to do, and no longer trying to hide their laughter, they buckled and laughed themselves to tears.

Sean didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. He seemed to want to add to the jest, but couldn’t talk and blush at the same time. And so he looked rather pliantly at the ground.

Altogether, he thought Sean was doing pretty well being out before his teammates. After all Sean had been nervous going to their players’ party those first couple of months after coming out.

Sean murmured to the quarterback coach, turning with his hand on his arm. He smiled and followed Sean, giving the still laughing men a small wave. 

And as he followed Sean towards the chain link gate, he turned and looked over his shoulder, to see the quarterback coach give him a discrete thumbs up. He turned back and smiled to himself.

At the gate, he presumed that Sean might want a quick rather than a protracted parting, due to the newness of it all.

Instead as he reached for the gate, the guard standing a short distance from them, Sean’s fingers grazed his watch.

Sean took his wrist, and when he looked into Sean’s eyes it was to see him staring at him with what he could only term as appreciation.

Sean smoothed his fingers along the inside of his wrist. “I’m glad you came, Holden,” he said intensely. His eyes conveyed so much more than gratitude. 

So much so that he had to glance around a little to see just how far they were from the fans. Not very.

“What time are you leaving tonight?”

He glanced quickly back at Sean. “Actually, I thought I’d stay till the morning, if that works for you.”

Sean’s blush actually intensified.

“I’d love that.”

He nodded, trying not to react to Sean’s distracting behavior. Either he was getting the wrong vibes from his overheating brain—Sean was gleaming next to him his formfitting jersey, and he was trying not to even look down at the training pants—or Sean was acting as if he had just successfully picked him up in the bar in his mind.

And then to his surprise, Sean leaned over and dropped a soft peck on his cheek.

And then to his _utter_ surprise, there came wolfish whistles and catcall from the fans.

Sean grinned and began backing away. ”I’ll see you later,” he mouthed.

Nodding, he raised a hand in farewell, as he watched him turn and begin jogging back to the sidelines. Then he smiled at the guard, who closed the gate after him, put on his sunglasses, and headed back to his car.

And thus ended his first exposure to the world of Sean “Sensation” Jackson.

~*~

It was while at Sean’s physical training session that afternoon that he realized he might be looking at a real problem. 

That, despite having felt it all his life, he might now have to accept that he had a bona fide fetish.

Sure, he had always had the hots for physically well-put-together, jockish guys, and in his college days he had thought he had seen bodies, and packages, fine enough to occasionally make him feel faint.

But what he was feeling there, seated on one of the couches lining the walls of the training rooms, was attraction on a whole other level.

Sean, suspended on some kind of machine that looked like a tilted bicycle with no wheels, had his head and shoulders stuck fast between two giant shoulder pads, pumping both legs and arms at the verbal direction of his trainer, looking as though they meant to generate electricity from the machine.

Sean was wearing nothing but cycling shorts and sneakers. The shorts, which had stunned him when Sean had first walked out in them, were dark and made of the same thick, stretchy high tech material, hit mid-thigh and did nothing except accentuate everything necessary.

He had stared as Sean put down his gym bag, got on the machine and gripped its rubber reinforced handles, and had slowly started building up momentum. It was weighted, and Sean had rode hard to even get it going. But soon, it was going.

Soon he was staring at the high sheen that was glazing Sean’s skin in the purposely overheated room, and in record time was aching in places he didn’t even know he had.

At first he had been unable to even fantasize. But that shock passed and he slid into self-torment.

He was imagining what it would be like to be under Sean right at that moment, hearing the soft, deep breathing and watching those golden muscles flex and relax… maybe get dripped on…

He swallowed and shifted his eyes, thinking he should probably distract himself.

But looking around the room did him no favors. The training facility was not only full of players and coaches, but also families spending an hour or two with their loved ones between training sessions. There were also small press interviews going on around the room.

There was lots going on in the training facility, but all he was seeing were men without jerseys, padding and gear, sweat dripping, scrubbed hair. Nothing to get in the way of hours of fantasy.

Every time one of them went up and slapped Sean’s ass, he broke into a sweat.

Some of the players looked like solid walls of flesh that nothing could get past, which he supposed was their purpose on the team, but for whom he could think of other uses, and others outright looked like they could star in their own gay porn titles.

He’d known Sean was yanking his chain when Sean had said they didn’t engage in circle jerks in the locker rooms. That was total nonsense. You’d have to.

He felt a bump against his shoulder.

Looking behind him on the back of the couch, a little boy of about three was scrambling his way along the back of the couches, crawling at a fast enough pace to have slipped a parent’s watchful eye.

He looked around to see whose kid it was and spotted a man suddenly looking frantically around him. The man looked up and he raised a hand to him, turning to catch the boy by the elastic of his denims.

The father rushed over, plucking the boy from the back of the sofa, and crashed down beside him.

“Thank you!”

“Don’t mention it.”

He smiled down at the boy, whose adorable brown curls spilled everywhere. The boy sat still long enough for his father to settle in, then clambered right back over his father’s shoulder and headed right back to his improvised jungle gym.

“Are you press?” the father asked him, trying to keep a hold on the boy while taking in his suit.

He shook his head, pointing. “I’m with the quarterback.”

The man turned and looked at where Sean was just finishing up, and for moment there was a pause.

“Oh,” the man said. “Right.”

He waited.

“My wife works in the personnel office,” the man continued, turning back to him.

He nodded, relieved that he hadn’t just had his mood messed with.

The little boy, apparently tired of his crawling mission, settled back down by squeezing between him and the father. The kid sat comfortably, with his arm on his thigh, quite as if he knew him.

He looked down in surprise and the father chuckled.

“He’s like with everybody. I think he wants to be a grown up.”

He smiled, nodding, and turned in time to see Sean observing them.

He was about to wave when he noticed Sean’s strangely excited eyes.

It took him a moment, but he quickly realized that he knew what that look was all about. His jaw almost dropped open.

Keeping his eyes firmly on Sean, he mouthed a clear but discrete _No_ in Sean’s direction. But Sean only moved his eyes from him to the boy, then back again.

He turned away. _Ugh._ Sean was crazy. He had barely gotten over saying yes to _marriage_ and here Sean was going goggly eyed at the first sight of him with a kid. It made him queasy.

The boy shifted and he instinctually looked down, then thought better of it as it might give Sean the wrong idea, and tried just looking somewhere else instead.

The boy’s father began to chuckle. He turned to him.

“Yeah, I’ll tell ya, I didn’t want kids either.”

Oh, brother.

“At first,” the dad corrected.

“No?” he asked politely, bracing himself for the inevitable. “What changed your mind?”

“My best buddy had a kid. Once we started taking that little guy fishing, I knew I had to be a dad.”

“That’s...nice.”

The dad laughed.

“What?” he asked politely.

“You’ll get there.”

He tilted his head noncommittally. He really didn’t like people presuming that everyone wanted kids, and he liked it even less when they made him feel that he was missing something if he didn’t join in. He didn’t think it was for everyone and he felt that that was okay.

Sean had started packing up, and so he told the man it was nice to have met him, shook the little boy’s proffered hand, and quickly stood from the couch. He started over to Sean.

Sean, bringing his eyes from the couch, gave him a slow look as he approached.

“Please don’t say a word,” he begged.

“You mean aside from, I would have dropped an egg just now if I had ovaries?”

Sean had said it in a low voice, but he heard it. 

He briefly closed his eyes, supposing it was payback enough for teasing him on the field this morning.

“Thought you’d over be there all day, actually,” Sean said, zipping up his bag. “Knowing you and people you’ve just met.”

But by now he was very close up to Sean’s body. And he had forgotten what they were talking about.

His eyes had strayed to Sean’s naked chest and he didn’t seem to know where else to look.

“Sweetheart,” Sean said softly.

He thought he responded, but it seemed he hadn’t.

It had only been ten days. How had Sean’s body transformed into this… candy-coated… thing… 

“Let’s get you home,” Sean said quietly.

This time they both ignored whatever it was he said in response.

~*~

He was fucked.

That was the last thought he had before his brain fried.

They were back at his townhouse, him forcibly displacing cushions from the couch, with Holden somehow having no problems keeping him pinned to it, sucking what was left of his brains out through his cock.

His hands were trembling on Holden’s shoulders, trying not to bury themselves in his hair, to pull on him. His heels dug into the sofa, while Holden’s throat closed around him, milking each ounce out of him.

He was going to come apart so hard he was going to see galaxies. Lifting his head, not quite believing it, he stared down as Holden’s lips stretched around his cock, pressing down, making him all but disappear, hard and slow, into his wet hot mouth.

And then he was trapped against the back of Holden’s throat, being sucked back there, and he nearly screamed, terrified of what might happen if he came now.

Pulling back against the tightness, he heard himself whimpering in protest, his toes contracting and nearly hurting him, and then Holden swirled around him with his tongue. His orgasm blindsided him.

Still on his elbow, staring down at Holden, he spat out a curse, several, and was bucking, ripping at Holden’s hair. 

Holden made quiet sounds, like he was liking this reaction. 

He heard himself crying out, feeling that something was happening to him. 

He couldn’t remember how his hand had ended up in Holden’s hair. He was pulling on fistfuls, trying to release his cock so he could fuck it in deeper. But he would surely die if Holden didn’t take it all out of him. His hips moved, hard and fast, his body in its own world.

The sensations began dying out, when he felt he had nothing more to give, Holden slipped him gently from his mouth, pressing his lips to the head of his cock. There he sucked him hard. 

He choked on his breathing as he ejaculated again, his last thought that he was fucked.

~*~

He came to with Holden softly licking him, with him splayed among the cushions, one arm flung over his eyes, the other still gripped in Holden’s hair, panting harder than he had all afternoon on the PowerSled. 

He was trying to stop saying _fuck,_ over and over, and failing.

Jesus Christ, he had just been deep throated.

He tried to say something, along the lines of why am I just finding this out, but his breathing wouldn’t stop trembling long enough for him to speak.

Feeling movement, he lowered his arm from his face to see Holden coming up to him. 

He immediately grabbed Holden’s hips and pulled him forward, thrilling to the unexpected eroticism of Holden doing this on his own, without it being something he’d had to instigate.

Holden straddled his chest, and he could have passed out from the excitement.

Jacket still on, his belt unbuckled, Holden had already unzipped his fly. He reached down and took a hold of himself, moaning softly in a way that made his toes curl all over again.

Then, tentatively, Holden began touching his pecs, and doing so in a way that made him blush and push upright.

He looked up at Holden.

Holden seemed to be in a world of his own. His eyes were following his fingers, his lashes obscuring what was going on inside them.

Then Holden took him by the back of his head, his hand still stroking his stiff cock, and pulled him up further. He slid out his tongue and first kissed him, then took him fully. And suddenly Holden was fisting his hair and thrusting deeply, in a way he suddenly loved more than he could put into words. 

Relaxing into Holden’s hand, into his thrusts, he let him set the pace. And Holden, moaning above him, did.

It was making him groan, he was feeling himself getting hard again.

Something was different. Something had changed. 

If he couldn’t feel it in the way they were having sex at that moment, he had seen it in the way Holden had looked at him when they had walked through the door. 

He had grimaced apologetically, and had said, “I stink,” and Holden had look at him and said, “I know.”

~*~


	4. Chapter 4

Caught in a blaze of morning sunlight shining through his front door, they stood kissing interminably by the frosted glass.

Several times he tried and broke the kiss, only to resume it, his hands resting on Holden’s hips, his mouth finding new places on Holden’s he hadn’t tasted that morning.

And he was getting no help from Holden, who when he broke their kiss, merely stood there with an upturned face, eyes closed as if in meditation.

Holden was fully dressed, his car in the driveway, and he was in his briefs and nothing else. It was a state not resulting from a shortness of time to get dressed. And judging from the way Holden was responding, he felt it he had made the right choice as commentary on last night.

Holden finally opened his eyes, when it was patent that they couldn’t keep it up without returning to bed, and stood there breathing and blinking in a preoccupied manner. Then Holden lowered his eyes to the floor, apparently observing their feet. After a moment he realized that Holden was intentionally avoiding his gaze.

He silently stared down at Holden’s lowered lashes, breathing in the scent of his shampoo.

“Um…” Holden said quietly. “We didn’t get a chance to go over the paperwork for your foundation.”

He resisted the urge to tighten his hold on him and pull him closer. He instead replied, “I’m sure you’ll handle it just fine.”

Holden gave a faint nod. His eyes were still on the floor, his mind clearly on a different train of thought.

“We do need your signature on some of those documents,” Holden continued vaguely.

“Huh… Well, I’m sure we can get to it next time.”

Holden nodded. And then there was silence.

Then he said softly, “I think you like this.”

Holden didn’t speak for a moment. Then he asked, “Like what?”

“This.”

Holden glanced at him, then down at his chest where his own eyes had briefly dropped. It was only then that Holden became aware of where his hands had been the entire time. Holden had been stroking his pecs. With both hands.

Holden’s hands came down. And Holden retracted his thoughts even farther.

“It’s different,” Holden said quietly.

He didn’t say anything. He watched Holden, his heart beating steadily to the word. 

_Different._

Holden lowered his hands completely, and pecked a chaste kiss to his cheek. 

Then awkwardly patting his chest, Holden stepped out of his embrace and turned for the door.

Okay. Apparently they weren’t going to discuss what had happened last night… and again this morning.

And upon thinking that, it became clear to him that he was on shaky ground with Holden without knowing how he had gotten here.

He reached around Holden and opened the door, returning his chaste kiss with one to his jaw. Then he widened the door and let him step through.

Holden raised a hand in farewell, turned and left the house.

He closed the door and remained standing there, barely able to see straight. Piece by piece, he gathered his thoughts.

Last night he had returned from their evening sessions at their facility to an even more astounding experience than the one from the afternoon. An experience he had only ever fantasized about, something he hadn’t imagined Holden might be interested in. Holden had been so hesitant, so restrained, but had nevertheless done it. And while thought of Holden inside him had always been enough to make his _heart_ come, the _reality_ — the reality had been perfect.

He leaned forward until his head was pressed into the glass door. He closed his eyes.

In that habitually boring bed of his upstairs, he had watched Holden go to a place of seeking his own pleasure that had left him worse than on his knees. It had been a glimpse of something vast, an entirely new arena in which things were...different.

And now, God help him, he wasn’t allowed to talk about it?

It had been on the tip of his tongue to say _Come back tomorrow and stay the rest of the season. Do your work from upstairs and I won’t make a sound, I won’t even look at you unless you want me to. Forget L.A., forget those people. You don’t need them, you need me._

But he hadn’t said a word. Holden had seemed more stunned than even he had been. What was happening was obviously very personal to Holden, and Holden didn’t seem to be in a place to discuss it.

But if Holden was having a sexual awakening because of his football season physique—it was pretty obvious even if Holden didn’t want to say it—then he didn’t think that this brief visit would be the last all month he would hear from Holden. Maybe not even in this week, if he was lucky.

There was no need to push. He knew by now that with Holden it was just a matter of waiting things out.

He pushed from the door, about to go get ready for the day. And he couldn’t help that he was smiling. He might have pulled the trigger on the word _separation_ too quickly.

Taking the stairs two at a time, his smile turned into a grin. For once he looking was forward to their 4pm ice baths.

~*~

Back in L.A., back at the office, he spent five days spent having hot flashes. By the time the sixth day rolled around, he found himself standing in front of his bathroom mirror with his toothbrush in his mouth, and knew he had to face some of it.

What exactly had happened?

_You know exactly what happened._

Okay, fine. He’d go ahead and skip the preliminaries of self-analysis.

He wanted to go back down there.

There. He had said it. That about covered the long and short of it.

For one incredible day, and one even more incredible night, he had somehow done it. He just been Holden, free and clear of anyone’s expectations.

After the revelations of the summer, he supposed he couldn’t be too surprised that sides of him were coming out that he had sometimes wondered about. Like how, for instance, while he had loved having sex with all those different men over the years, he had never once felt the need to go for what he wanted sexually.

He had always been satisfied with the most rudimentary type of sex when he had known he wanted more. And down in Sean’s townhouse, the urge had come barreling to the surface in one uncontrollable moment.

He had lusted in the afternoon, and that night had done exactly what—all the things—he had fantasized about.

Which should have left him all well and good, he reasoned, scrubbing his teeth and trying not to be derailed by mental images. How incredibly right that it was happening with Sean and not with some other guy. What would be the problem in such a case? Well, it was that he was having trouble dealing.

He didn’t do this. No matter what people presumed about him, he wasn’t a shallow person. He respected the men he was with and genuinely enjoyed their company. He never treated them like prostitutes and he didn’t use their bodies for selfish pleasure. So he sure as hell wasn’t about to start with his future husband. Yet that was precisely— 

He forged ahead. That was _exactly_ what he wanted to do.

He wanted to...objectify Sean.

He stopped and looked at himself in the mirror. At his shining eyes and flushed face.

Yup. That sounded about right.

He took a short deep breath, then let it out.

He wanted to have intense, mindless, stranger-sex with Sean. The kind that ignored all your protests and took you right down to where you lived. To that secluded, kinda rundown place you went to do all your things when no one was watching. And he wanted it bad.

He felt so... _weird._ The summer had freed him of a lot of things, but this?

 _Yes, yes!_ his mind kept yelling back. 

Why the hell couldn’t he just go down there and explore the heck out of this? Why, if he had managed to land the real life version of his hottest fantasies, wasn’t he down there right now getting ruined for any other man?

_Because._

His eyes drifted to the damp piece of paper he had taped to the tiles beneath the mirror. Sean’s training schedule. The piece of paper that told him that Sean didn’t have time for this.

The team’s daily schedule ran from 8am to 10pm. It comprised of grueling practice and training sessions during the day, broken up by rounds of coach and team meetings. Then in the evenings it was mentally taxing study sessions—he had seen the play books, and some of them looked like encyclopedias. 

Sean was also under tremendous pressure coming off his intensely scrutinized offseason. The moment Sean had put on his training uniform at the beginning of August, there had been no room for error.

Which was all to say, he couldn’t simply go down there and take precious hours off Sean’s day turning him into his big, golden sex toy.

Staring at himself in the mirror, he took his time licking toothpaste off his lips at that last thought, pretending that the slippery substance was something else.

He needed to focus.

Maybe, he went back to reasoning, he could wait until September when training camp was over and Sean was in a less pressure-filled place. Or maybe he could use the NFL’s “Tuesdays-off” and see Sean more often. But no, he had read those days off were in name only.

Or, he could just wait until after the season to explore these feelings.

_Yeah, right._

He slipped out his toothbrush and spat into the sink.

God, who was he fooling. He was feinding for it.

Who would have thought that he’d turn out to be, one, one of those people who couldn’t give their partners breathing room in a relationship, and two, a coward?

He rinsed his mouth and popped the toothbrush back into its cupholder.

Then wetting a hand, he ran it through his hair, pushing it off his forehead. Giving himself one final once-over, he turned and exited the bathroom. 

He’d just have to take with him to bed that cushion that smelled so inconsiderately of Sean and...do things to it.

~*~

“And to what do we owe _this_ pleasure?”

Reaching the table of friends he had finally left his condo to catch up with, he was sure to keep an impassive expression as he pulled out a chair.

“Oh, right,” Elliot, the friend who had asked the question, now said, smiling deviously. “It must be football season.”

He sat down, ignoring the round of amused looks from the two other friends around the table.

He hadn’t seen this lot since before Valentine’s Day, the spring fight with the FRC, summer trauma with his parents—not to mention his wanting to spend every waking moment with Sean—isolating him from them almost completely. So he was aware that he was in for a grilling. 

And he did feel bad, seeing as they were his closest friends. But he hardly ever gave up details of his affairs, and doubly so now that it was the man who had become his fiancé.

While they stared expectantly at him, he was truthfully more distracted by the flower-filled patio of the hotel, flowers bright enough to make him think of sunshine on the Malibu coast. Especially as viewed from a bedroom surrounded by glass walls.

Six months ago he would never have thought about anything as flighty as sunshine. Now the thought stroked the back of his mind like a sexy blond come-on.

Sunshine on shiny water. Lilac-scented candles, fluffy whipped cream, and lazy sex on even lazier afternoons. All wonderful things.

And all things for which he had to thank his missing, badly missed fiancé.

Smiles in place, his friends waited.

He sighed and then pulled up his chair a little more. He reached for the bread basket. 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t want to talk about what?” Petey, of Mexican descent and referred to by all as the prettiest boy in the land, asked immediately. “Getting a breather?”

He look in exasperation at Petey. “What did I just say?”

“Don’t pay them any attention, Holden,” Craig, one of their senior vice presidents at his firm, told him sympathetically. “You’ll only encourage them.”

“Oh, like you don’t wanna know,” Elliot said. “And whoever said Holden needed encouragement? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If I had Holden’s luck with men I’d be the biggest whore this side of Congress.”

“Right?” Petey sighed.

He held up his left hand and pointed to the width of white gold with its enormous diamond embedded in it. A ring which he had once thought was overkill but whose size he was totally in favor of now. “Excuse me, gentlemen, this conversation is over.”

“Here, here,” Craig murmured.

“God, I love that ring,” Petey said under his breath.

“Fine, boring,” Elliot said.

“Boring is right. That’s me now, boring about to be married guy. So no more remarks about my past life please, and thank you Petey, I love it too.”

“Heartbreaking,” Elliot said, shaking his head and making Petey laugh behind his fingers.

“Did you guys set a date yet?” Craig asked him gently.

“We’re waiting until after the football season to make any decisions.”

“Makes sense.”

“So, Holden…”

“Elliot,” he said warningly.

“No, no, no,” Elliot said, holding up both hands and widening his eyes. “I just wanted to know what you wanted us to tell all those hot hungry boys who come throwing their numbers at us to pass on to you. That’s all.”

He looked around the table in surprise. “What have you guys been telling them all summer?”

Elliot, to his credit, looked embarrassed. “Stay tuned?”

His jaw dropped.

Snorts came from around the table. Guiltily at first, then openly, and soon all of them, including himself, were struggling not to laugh.

“Thanks, guys,” he said resignedly. “Thanks for the vote of confidence in my ability to maintain a serious relationship.”

“It’s only because we admire you so much,” Petey offered.

He shook his head in helpless amusement.

Craig raised his glass, and the others did the same. He followed, cringing.

“Here’s to Holden meaning it,” Craig said.

“Wait, before that,” Elliot quickly added, waving a hand, then throwing him a grudging look. “Here’s to a spectacular run… gone too soon.”

He smiled as they clinked glasses.

“I like that I have such mature, supportive friends,” he told them with a smile.

“All right,” Petey said, lowering his glass and leaning in with an all too familiar look in his eyes. “Now that we’ve shown the proper respects for your matrimonial status, start talking. What’s he _like?_ I mean, those _eyes._ I didn’t have time to go up to him at your mother’s cocktail party—”

“More like you didn’t have the courage,” Craig interrupted.

“But,” Petey went on, sparing Craig a cutting glance. “You have to spill.”

“Forget he,” Elliot said. “What’s _it_ like? And by it I mean the fucking. Because, hello, stamina? I heard they make them run up the sides of mountains with truck tires tied around their waists. Seriously, truck tires? That, friends, is why you get you one of those.”

He sighed. It was going to be a long brunch.

~*~

By the time the waiter came for their orders, he had managed to deflect interest from him by making a slightly unfair but calculated remark about Petey’s current—and constant—drama with the latest idiot he was wasting his time with. A guy who no one knew whether was gay or straight, but who was having a gay old time taking full advantage of Petey’s affections for him.

So conversation had been off him for sometime, but soon he noticed that Craig’s attention hadn’t moved with it. So while the waiter took Elliot and Petey’s orders, he leaned sideways and whispered, “What?”

Craig shrugged, in his slow, controlled way. “I guess I’m proud of you.”

He looked surprised at Craig, who merely shrugged. Sitting back, he stared at his menu while Craig gave his order.

For whatever reason, he didn’t know what to make of that.

It wasn’t until he was driving down to Laguna Beach later that evening that he realized why he had been so affected by Craig’s words.

From the moment he had decided to would cash in his chips and go with Sean, no one in his life had said those words to him.

Not one person.

Yet that was exactly what he had accomplished with Sean; something worth being proud of.

And acknowledging that was how he found himself tightening his grip on the steering wheel, staying right where he was on the 405, and continuing to head south, well past Laguna Beach.

~*~

What the hell was the matter with Holden?

Gritting his teeth, he turned over in bed.

After what Holden had done to him last week, how had Holden simply returned to L.A. and forgotten all about him? Who did that?

Closing his eyes, he tried to relax and simply couldn’t.

Damn it, he’d said he wouldn’t pressure Holden. He knew he had no right to. But he was dying for some love. Of this new kind he had been teased with.

He sat up and swung his legs to the floor, scrubbing a hand through his hair. 

He was used to having better sexual control of himself than this. It was partly elevated testosterone levels from going into the season, he knew that. But the understanding served him no useful purpose.

He would draw himself a bath. Something warm and therapeutic. With lilacs.

Shit no. That scent made him horny. 

Come to think of it, warm baths made him horny. Giving himself handjobs made him hornier still. And _thinking_ about it was the worst of it combined.

He checked the wall clock and saw that it was quarter to midnight. He’d left Chargers Park at eleven and their schedule put them back there no later 8am. He needed to make himself relax and go to sleep, something his aching body and bruised up bones had been able to do for six seasons without any problems. Apparently not any more.

He sighed and got up. He’d give himself a warm bath, a hand job, and be done with it.

He reached the bathroom entrance just as his phone chimed.

It was his ringtone for Holden.

Going back to the nightstand, he picked up his phone, staring at it for a moment. Then he answered.

“Hey sweetheart,” he said in an even tone.

“Hey,” Holden said softly.

He stopped moving, mid-straightening. Holden’s voice had an odd note to it, which he instantly recognized. It was a tone he had come to associate with Holden keeping something from him.

His heart thudded against his ribcage and he sat down hard on the bed. Had there already been—

“Sean, do you have a minute?”

He couldn’t get any words out. Short of breath, he opened his mouth to speak and felt his heart going at triple speed. His fingertips were suddenly icy. Slipping them under his armpit he whispered, “Y-yeah, s-sure. Shoot.”

But suddenly words were spilling from his lips as if his life depended on it. He was saying anything he could before he watched his life flip right before his eyes.

“Sweetheart, I-I’ve been meaning to call. I-I’ve missed you. I-I’ve—” And then he realized that he hadn’t called at all. That he _didn’t_ call.

If they spoke it was because Holden had initiated the call. And if he wanted to talk to Holden he’d first text and then wait for Holden to call him back. He had been doing it since he came down for training camp.

He closed his eyes in horror, recognizing the behavior. He felt ill.

“Holden,” he said weakly. “I should have called.”

“Sean.”

“It-it’s just that— I was—”

A loud _ding-dong_ suddenly broke through the house. 

Turning, he stared through his open bedroom door into the hallway. It was the front doorbell.

Christ, which of his teammates was going through such a hard time that he needed to talk in the middle of the night?

He faced forward again. “Holden, I’m sorry but could you give me a second? Someone’s at the door.”

“Sure.”

He spoke carefully into the phone. “Don’t hang up. Don’t go anywhere.”

“I won’t,” Holden said as he lowered the phone.

He took the stairs two at a time into the living room. Hurrying across the floor, he grabbed the handle and yanked open the door—

And found Holden standing there.

Startled, he pulled back.

Holden was smiling beautifully, his lashes batting once as he softly sang, “Surprise.”

~*~


	5. Chapter 5

August vanished in a haze of sex.

Training camp was morning till night, and Holden was any time in between. 

Three nights a week Holden somehow found time to come down, and they would get in as much sex as was humanly possible.

It was smooth, it was easy, and it was one hundred percent different. Each time he heard Holden’s car purring in the driveway and peeked out through the blinds, each time he saw him shutting the car door and beeping it shut, he felt as if he was having a lucid dream.

He would wait at his front door, or in the darkened living room, or upstairs in his bedroom, and they would touch and feel each other’s skin, and in minutes their sweat, and after that anything else they could coax out of each other.

Then Holden would wake, eat, and head back to L.A. And then they would do it all over again. 

It went on like that for a month. 

Until one night when he woke up in the middle of the night.

It was pitch black and silent, and something had woken him up. He lifted his head, peering toward the door, feeling weird, disorientated. For long moments he couldn’t situate himself. 

It was late at night, and it was football season. And he was in his townhouse in San Diego, that much he knew. But something was odd. Different. Holding his head up, he listened and heard a sudden clang in the kitchen. He continued to stare hazily at the door until the familiar thump of a fridge being shut reached his ears.

Dropping back to the bed, he released a breath.

Holden on a midnight snack raid.

His eyes closed, he was sinking back into sleep when the rest of it came. 

Holden, in San Diego, in his townhouse. 

Holden with him and not back in L.A. with some guy.

Feeling victorious, he felt a smile pulling on his face.

_Take that,_ he thought, to every man who had come before him.

_I win._

The thought swam warmly in his head, and he drifted back to sleep.

~*~

When they couldn’t physically be together they talked on the phone. Or rather, Holden talked and he listened.

Holden had long ago proved no good at having phone sex, as try as he might he couldn’t get the hang of not saying practical, excitement dampening things in the middle of his attempts.

Because of it, he got good at relieving himself, his grudge with hand jobs very much a thing of the past. 

But hand jobs to being with Holden was like a photograph to the real thing. Most times he ended up at practice more frustrated than not, wanting to fuck Holden so badly his skin hurt. It made for especially achy football practice. 

But because it wasn’t affecting his game, and because he was getting so much more than he would have ever dreamed of for this time of year, he gave that particular problem no second thought.

He pushed the volume up on his earpiece, listening to the way Holden’s breaths were coming down the line.

Holden was telling him about a flight he’d just gotten back on, and it was as though they were talking in metaphors, all this talk about long thises and hard thats. Never mind that Holden was referring to wait times and overhead bins.

It felt like an inadvertent tease. Like Holden was holding something back. It was obvious that he wanted to say something and couldn’t.

With all the togetherness they had been chasing all month, Holden still hadn’t given him anything close to what he had unleashed that day at the start. Holden had never even referenced it.

But when they were together Holden still gave him those painfully hungry looks, as if, were he only able to get past whatever was blocking him, he would _show_ him something.

And God, did he want to see it.

On some nights like this he could almost taste it, almost feel it in the way Holden’s words bumped against his thoughts.

But in his vow not to push, he only circled the site, maintained a presence, and tried to be supportive.

“What’re you wearing?” he asked in a pause in Holden’s narration.

Okay, not very subtle support, but a man could only take so much.

Holden smiled. He could feel it.

“What, you have to go soon?” Holden asked teasingly.

“Like in five. It’s twelve-fifteen and I gotta get some sleep. So a visual might help move this thing along.”

“How are you even up so late?” Holden asked. “Shouldn’t you be passed out from exhaustion by now?”

“Don’t try to change the subject.”

Holden chuckled, self-consciously, then was quiet.

He smiled to himself, practically seeing the cornered look in Holden’s eyes.

“Okay,” Holden said softly. “I’m actually wearing your number.”

His cock pulsed. Automatically, he moved his hand to the waistline of his briefs and waited. “Did you wash it?”

“Eww,” Holden said softly, laughing.

The hand slipped inside his briefs. “Whose number’re you wearing?”

“Yours,” Holden replied, a little shyly for him.

“Tell me something good, Wilson.”

And Holden went silent. A silence full of unspoken things.

He pushed his briefs down enough to free his cock. Holden would be of little help at this stage, but it wasn’t about to stop him from pinching the tip of his cock. He breathed deeply to avoid gasping into the earpiece, and began fantasizing before he knew what was happening. That Holden was there in his bed, about straddling his chest and giving him a taste of his cock.

He began absorbing small, breathy sounds and thought it was coming from him. But it was coming from the other side of the line. It was as if Holden could sense his thoughts.

“I miss you,” Holden whispered. By way of phone sex.

He didn’t let it deter him. “Yeah?” he returned. “What parts of me?”

Holden laughed. “All of you.”

“I don’t know. Sounds like you could say that about just about anything. I’m gonna need specifics.”

Holden went quiet again, while he began to stroke himself. Holden said, “Mm...” noncommittally, a smile in his voice.

_Come on,_ he encouraged. _You can do it._

“I miss your...hands, and your...eyes, and your... beard.”

He closed his eyes in disbelief. That someone could do the kinds of things Holden had done to him and then be self-aware about it should be against the law.

“And the other day when the anchors on ESPN was trash talking your stats,” Holden continued, “I sent in a text saying that if they knew what they were talking about, they’d get real jobs. They read it on the air and everything.”

“That was you?” he joked, keeping his voice warm.

Holden chuckled. “Yup.”

“Well, you do trash talk with the best of them, sweetheart.”

Holden gave him a very small, distracted, “Yeah,” and then told him he knew he had to go, but that he ought to think of him, as he would definitely be thinking of him.

He sent a kiss down the line, and they disconnected, promising to talk the following night.

He tossed his earpiece and squeezed himself, shutting his eyes as he recalled the events of that first night in August. Shuddering quietly on the bed, he gasped as he pinched himself, then let go and began to stroke hard. 

He licked his lips, stroking faster, burning with excitement, knowing that it was only a matter of time before Holden would come to him and look at him the way he had that night when he had fucked him, touched him so intimately. 

And when he did things would be different.

He arched off the bed, quickening his pace as his cock spurted, hot come streaking him from his stomach to his chest.

He laid there panting, staring down at his stomach.

He told himself to be patient.

Things were just getting started.

~*~

“ _Sean! Sean! Sean!_ ” 

The sound of forty-five thousand football fans shook the stadium. They were letting him know how they felt about their quarterback.

On the heels of the insane offseason he had had, he stared in a renewed awe at the sight before his eyes.

Sections of the stadium had begun standing, and soon a standing ovation had swept across the stands, the booming chants followed by thunderous applause. Banners were unfurled and held high, proclaiming nothing but love for their quarterback. 

He could have fainted with relief.

Though he hadn’t noticed any difference in reception from fans at training camp, no cold shoulders, no whispered remarks, he hadn’t realized how nervous he had been about the team’s first Fan Day rally. Even the slightest of booing could have caused tension on the team, a feeling of a shortage of confidence in the starting quarterback.

But judging by the banners alone in the stands, the Day’s rally had filled the stadium even more than in previous years. It was louder and wilder than ever before.

He turned and grinned at Vance, one of their offensive linesmen and a good friend, shaking his head and making a show of blowing out a relieved breath.

Vance grinned, leaning over to clamp a hand on his shoulder. 

“Everybody just wants to play some football!” Vance yelled right into his ear.

He nodded, and yelled back, “Don’t I know it!”

And Vance was absolutely right. 

When all was said and done, fans came to see him make passes and score touchdowns, and it was fucking up on the field that unleashed their wrath.

As far as fans were concerned, the dramas of the offseason were over. September had arrived and football madness had descended with a vengeance.

Gone too were the preseason hemming and hawing, commentators were on a brand new high. Fantasy football leagues were filled to the brim, and announcers, reporters, every man, woman and child associated with football was screaming for glory or nothing.

It was the kind of love that made him play through rain and snow, pain and injury, terror and impending defeat. And spread out on either side of him, on the glistening grass at Qualcomm Stadium, he knew that the rest of the fifty-two players who made up the 2010 San Diego Chargers football team felt the same.

Sure, the usual locker room tensions were already back: Who would make the plays each Sunday and who would most likely let down his teammates; whose injury was going to be the real threat to the team and which hyped draft pick was going to fizzle instead of pop.

But it was also time to either turn off the outside world or call upon it for whatever mojo it could give you. It was time to head into the gale force of the coming season, or simply admit defeat before it began. Because this year, like every other year, _everybody’s_ team was going to the Super Bowl. Since in fifty years of NFL history, only a handful of teams had ever made it to the Bowl two years in a row, you dare not speak of anything less.

So though the Pittsburg Steelers had won the Bowl last year, and were no doubt getting a pretty special fan rally at Heinz Stadium that week, Pittsburg was right now no better off for this year’s trophy than any other team in the league.

So if you prayed hard enough, _wanted_ it bad enough, ate your greens, did your chores, and were _good_ hard enough, your team—your quarterback—would to take you to the Championships. That was just football fact.

And on this glorious September morning, forty-five thousand fans believed it of him.

~*~

And every Friday, Saturday and Monday night, in his townhouse bedroom, he believed it of Holden.

It was like a liquid fire had consumed them.

They had ditched the phone calls altogether and simply cleared and cheated their way to make sure they could get those three nights. 

Suddenly he would be flat on his back gripping Holden’s ass so hard he was sure he was leaving bruises, and wondering how the hell Holden had gotten there so fast.

There was a hypnotic sensation to it, the feeling that something was smoldering between them, getting more, not less intense.

Sometimes it was a burning look Holden didn’t seem to be aware he was casting his way, and other times it was those lingering touches, those devastatingly unpredictable fingers faltering in their attempts at feeling him up, that left him desperately whispering _I like it, I love it,_ to keep it going.

And sometimes he got small but nicer rewards for it.

And hell yeah, he did everything in his power to make resisting all but unbearable for Holden.

On one particularly hopeful night he put on a formfitting sports tee over the type of joggers he knew Holden liked—the type that showed off his lower half—and stood in the entrance to his bathroom.

It was a warm night and the windows were open, the air around them languid.

Grabbing the overheard frame, he stretched in the entryway, exposing his torso and stomach in a way he hoped would give the obvious message.

Holden sat staring almost blindingly at him from the bed.

Holden had been looking even before he had started his little performance.

“So…uh, you want to do something tonight?” he asked passively.

Holden stared wordlessly.

“I was told this type of gear’s brand new from the sponsors, you know, the material and what not, and that they’re looking for me to try it out.” 

Trailing his fingers along the waistline of the pants, he refrained from adding, _Come on, get a clue already._

Holden said nothing for fully ten seconds. Then he hesitantly put aside the leather folder he had been looking at and stood up, coming over to him.

Standing with their heads close, Holden placed his hand on the T-shirt, then trailed his fingers to his edge of his stomach, grazing bare skin. He steadied his breaths and waited.

“It-it’s nice,” Holden whispered, then remained there in absolute silence.

And try as he might, calling on all his powers of self-control, he couldn’t just stand there when Holden refused to take any further action. He took the lead.

Lowering his arm from the door jamb overhead, he gripped the back of Holden’s head and covered his mouth with his. Holden immediately sucked and trapped his tongue deep in his mouth, and while he deeply kissed and stayed pliant and repeatedly slid his tongue inside his mouth, Holden did nothing more than slip his arm around his waist and hold him close.

And so on some nights he got nothing.

But he held on to his pledge to nurture this wild and promising thing, and wasn’t at all discouraged.

~*~


	6. Chapter 6

With the season opener rushing toward them at the speed of sound, practice took on an edge.

He ran the field like a man possessed, calling tighter plays and taking harder hits, willing his mind, his body, and his teammates, to keep up. It was a distraction and a blessing, conferring him understanding for the first time as to why, despite the bodily aches and exhaustion, once they got started, so many of his teammates were nightly shacked up with their wives or girlfriends.

The steady dose of love and attention made for the best knockout pill, his that much so because he felt alive, different, bigger than he had ever felt in his life. 

He’d felt emotion like it over the summer, something completely polar and negative. But it had been emotion of the same nevertheless. The powerful sensation that someone wanted you, so badly that they would change their whole life for you, and that you would do the same for them.

It was exhilarating, and _right_ for playing football.

He laughed as his Hail Mary sang over the head of a rushing cornerback, right into the hands of his good-for-it wide receiver, who pivoted out of the way, and skipped happily for a touchdown.

It prompted a howl and both middle fingers pointed in his direction from the cornerback, which made him grin and give him two thumbs up, as no sight could have made him happier. 

But he was going to pay for that touchdown. And even as their defense huddled and realigned, and he heard their taunts and goading, he told them to bring it even harder. He loved their 4pm ice baths, and he loved what came later even more.

And then one afternoon, in the middle of the month, Holden sent him a text out of the clear blue sky.

~*~

It was a cold day in September when they landed at Oakland airport. Descending in slow pairs from the plane, they were freezing from having just left the cozy warmth of a San Diego afternoon.

Being their first game of the season, everyone was mellow. Their opponents, the Oakland Raiders, were two-and-oh and hadn’t lost a game this season, so after test-me preseason games, they were finally about to get a proper NFL welcome. Tomorrow would set the tone for weeks to come in the season.

Five hundred feet in front of them was a line of fans, and they were stunned to find a large group of Chargers fans, as opposed to the usual one or two, pressed up against the fence, cheering and waving their banners.

He glanced at Castillo, their celebrity defensive tackle, descending the plane with him.

“This is new,” Cassie said, shooting him a loaded look. “Think it might have anything to do with the new, gay quarterback?”

He grinned and followed his teammates to the line, gratefully signing autographs for the support, their chill completely forgotten. 

A couple autographs in, his phone vibrated against his thigh.

He’d just seen the update to the Twitter account Kara’s office had set up for him, so he hadn’t been expecting any more notifications at least until they checked into the hotel. 

He fished out the phone and was suddenly staring at a stupefying text message.

It was from Holden and it said he was in Montreal and finishing up. He planned to catch a flight out to Oakland and would be there by ten, that he’d be staying at the downtown Marriott and would he like to meet him there? If he could make the time.

He moved to one side from the crowd and stared in disbelief at the text.

It seemed surreal that he was looking at something like this, more like a fantasy he was in bed at night playing out.

Was Holden really asking to meet him on the road in a city where he was playing football?

Holden wasn’t in L.A. instead, doing his... thing?

Even with the coming down from L.A. three times a week, he hadn’t expected… this.

Immediately, he texted back saying that he would see him that night around ten-thirty.

Then he pressed and held the bubble of the text until a dialogue popped up asking what he wanted to do with it. He forwarded it to his gmail account with the subject line: “First time.”

Yeah, it was pathetic, but he was loving every damn minute of it.

~*~

Lights out for the team was at 9pm but vets were given no curfew and were simply expected to be at the lockers by eight, ready to play. 

So by eleven that night, after settling into their hotel, he was standing at the foot of Holden’s hotel room bed facing him.

With the lights of downtown Oakland carpeting the view to their left, the feeling of surrealism only soared.

Dressed in his usual three-piece suit, Holden looked as though he had just stepped out of his office, and not from an international flight. The chill in the air was kept outside, and inside the suite it was warm and heavy with expectation.

He didn’t know what exactly Holden had texted him for, but it had been compelling enough for him to do it.

And though he was certain that Holden hadn’t tracked him across the country just to give him shy looks, he was less certain about Holden’s absolute commitment to see it through, whatever it was, even at this late stage.

Holden, shifting his feet, looked ready to bolt. He clearly still couldn’t voice what he was trying to do, much less act on it. 

But he was nothing if not prepared for this moment. Having struggled with his own needs so recently, he conscious of how vital it was that certain things get voiced, and thereby brought into existence.

So he took Holden’s hand, and slowly lifting it, he brought it up to his chest and pressed it over his heart.

“Holden,” he said softly. Holden didn’t look up. 

He kept his gaze on Holden’s downcast eyes.

“Sweetheart, I want you to make love to me.”

Holden’s eyes flew up to him. In the dim hotel room, they shone like stunned blue discs.

He waited for an answer.

Holden didn’t seem to have one. He could feel Holden’s pulse at the base of Holden’s hand, thrumming against his fingers. His own heart beat steadily. Nothing on earth could have taken this moment from him.

“I-I—”

He waited.

Holden’s lashes flicked over and over, his mind obviously caught in an internal debate.

Gently, he shoved at him with his body, and Holden automatically moved. Suddenly he was being pulled by his shirt toward the bed. Feverishly, he went.

He never let Holden more than two inches away from him as Holden turned him to the bed, moving so that he was feeling its edge against his legs in no time. Keeping close to Holden, he lowered himself cooperatively to the bed, running his hands under his jacket up his back and anywhere else he could reach.

Holden began flicking his tongue at his lower lip, slowly, calculatedly, as if off a promise he had made to himself that if he reached a certain number he would make a move.

It was like making warm metal pliable. He sat on the edge of the bed, half lying, half sitting up, held fast by Holden’s grip on his shirt and his hands massaging Holden’s back.

He gave himself over to the moment, burning with the feeling of being on a precipice. Like he was going to fall and get enveloped in heaven.

Then Holden reached his magic number, pushed him the rest of the way on the bed, and spread his legs.

Looking down at himself, he groaned soft and deep in his chest, staring at the ridge that had formed in his crotch, not certain how Holden was going to safely get his jeans off him. Not caring.

~*~

He got nothing for a full week after that.

No phone calls, no text messages, not even one trip down to San Diego.

He didn’t mind at all.

That night in Oakland he had seen Holden come apart.

He had left nothing to chance and once Holden had relieved him of his clothes had purposely chosen a position he knew no gay man in his right mind could resist. Making sure to never break eye contact, he had his ankles on Holden’s shoulders, cushions under his ass, and had started stroking himself. Slowly, languidly, he had locked eyes with him with the only desire in his heart burning in his eyes. He had done it all, licked his lips, tightened his abs, run his fingers up his thighs. 

Then he realized, with Holden staring for so long and so hard that he might have gone too fast. While Holden mentally finished off and was climaxing in his head, he slid his ankles from Holden’s shoulders, and wrapping his legs around Holden’s hips, locked them on his back. He reached forward instead and grabbed his ass, gently pulling him in.

“I-I’m not the best at this,” Holden stammered.

Ignoring words which were in total contradiction to what had happened between them that first night in August, he focused instead on stroking his increasingly wet cock.

Holden was kneeling between his legs, still in his clothes but with his jacket and vest off and his shirt partially unbuttoned, his fly unzipped and held open by his unbuckled belt. 

For reasons he didn’t believe Holden comprehended, even though he had told him enough for him put it together, he was on the brink of losing control.

He licked his lips and breathed. “Make me like it however you want to give it,” he’d whispered.

And that had done it. At least for that night.

Holden had come to him like he had wanted to brand him for life, and he still ached remembering the tenderness with which Holden had treated him. As if he had been made of porcelain and his pleasure in what they were doing had meant everything.

If _he_ had been prepared and their lovemaking had still wrecked him then he couldn’t imagine what mysteries were unfolding inside Holden’s head.

This thing he had stumbled onto couldn’t be put back into the bottle.

So he waited.

~*~

“You don’t experience an ounce of sexual intimacy with your partners, do you?”

It took him a moment to realize Elliot was talking to him.

Inside the busy Rodeo Drive deli where he and Elliot had met for lunch, he looked up from contemplating his tuna flatbread and frowned at Elliot.

“Excuse me?”

“You couldn’t have,” Elliot went on, tracing his realization. “Not with the way you go through men. And now of course it makes sense.”

“What are you talking about, there haven’t been that many,” he said defensively.

“Oh, you’ve had your moments.”

Momentarily stumped, his didn’t know where to begin. “I thought you said you admired it,” he protested, wondering why he felt he had to be protesting.

“Of course I do. Who doesn’t want to be impervious to heartbreak and emotional turmoil. You were breezing through men when the rest of us were whining over unreturned text messages.” Then Elliot lifted an eyebrow and nodded, as though he had imparted enough for the wise.

Elliot worked in-house as an attorney for a defense contractor, and was notorious for giving out or asking for information in cryptic piecemeal. As if piecing together bits of information was how people liked to discuss things.

“What does how many guys have been with have to do with me not _experiencing_ sexual intimacy?” he asked when Elliot apparently wasn’t going to continue. “That’s nonsense. I don’t have problems with sex.”

Elliot shook his head and then sipped his soda. “It’s not the same thing.”

He waited. Elliot raised an eyebrow once more, then lifted and dropped a shoulder.

“Will you speak?” he prompted forcefully.

“And say what? More paper and crayons, please?”

“ _Yes,_ you’re going to have to draw me a picture. How—” He stopped, glancing around and lowering his voice. “Why are we concluding that I don’t experience sexual intimacy with my partners? Where the hell are you getting that?”

“You’ve just told me that you’re starting to feel a self-consciousness about having sex with a man you’ve fucked a thousand times, and to whom you’re currently betrothed. That doesn’t make sense. Unless, for the first time, something is getting through. And by getting through I mean to you.”

He processed that, or tried to. It didn’t add up.

“Sean and I have never had any kind of intimacy problems,” he said. “Sexual or otherwise. I’ve always—”

And he stopped, too aware of the things he was saying to go on. He dropped his eyes to the table top, then to the floor. After a moment he remembered he was eating and picked up his sandwich.

Elliot leaned forward and said gently, “Holden, I’ve known you since we were freshmen in college. I’ve never known you to kiss and tell. In fact the only time we know there’s a problem in your relationship is because you’ve dumped the guy. And now here you are, telling me details about your sex life with your _fiancé._ It doesn’t get any more personal than that.”

He met Elliot’s eyes. “It’s too weird, right?”

“No,” Elliot said patiently, briefly closing his eyes. “It’s a huge step for you. It means you give a shit.”

He lowered his head, nodding. “I do. I definitely do.”

Elliot sat back. “Okay, good. So, let’s figure it out.”

“First, let’s just get one thing clear,” he hurriedly said. “I don’t have sexual intimacy problems, and least of all not with Sean. In fact sex is the one thing I can safely say we got right from the start.”

“Do tell,” Elliot murmured, an appreciative undertone softening his voice. “Kidding, kidding,” Elliot said, when he gave him a dark look.

He sighed. “I mean, i-if I got any more intimate with him I’d be—” He floundered, searching for a good analogy. “I’d be taking a job as the team’s towel boy.”

“Oh, you wish.”

He sighed harder. Elliot waved a hand, brushing away their current snag in conversation.

“Do you remember dog collar guy?”

He blinked, staring at Elliot. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. Remember you went out with him for, oh what was it, two and a half months, and had no idea he was into that kind of thing until that night we ran into him at Roosterfish?”

“Oh, God. What am I supposed to do about _that?_ And what does any of that have to do with what you just accused me of?”

“It wasn’t an accusation, just an observation.”

“But I’m not… frigid about sex.”

“No one is saying you are. But the fact that you went out with someone and had plentiful sex and didn’t know that he was into some light dom-sub? That’s a little telling. And then remember there was— Oh, what was his name? The one who liked to call you up in the middle of the workday and tell you what he was doing in the bathroom. He wanted for you to tell him what a bad boy he was being. You know,” Elliot prodded, “the one used to do whatever it was he did for the Emmys.”

“Kenneth,” he whispered, blushing.

“Yep. Him. You couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. And there’ve been a few others. Here’s the bottom line. You’re used to having the most vanilla type of sex imaginable, and now you want something more with your man who’s hung like a horse, and looks like the walking ad for chest harnesses, and you haven’t got a clue where to begin.”

He frowned in thought. “I don’t remember telling you about his—”

“Face it, Holden. The only reason you’re bringing any of this up is because you secretly want to ask me about having dirty sex.”

He closed his eyes and dropped his head backward, praying for patience. 

“I don’t,” he groaned. “I don’t have _vanilla sex_ and I’m not looking to start having dirty sex.”

“Sure y’are,” Elliot said. “And getting hand jobs during Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t count. We keep telling you that.”

Having brought his gaze back, he almost flicked a glance at Elliot but quickly caught himself. His blush fanning hotter across his face, he kept his gaze away, thankful that Elliot didn’t seem to have caught the connection between his once having let slip that he liked having that done to him, and Sean’s—

“The whole Grey’s Anatomy thing makes sense now, by the way,” Elliot said, shaking loose his ice before taking a sip. “In case you hadn’t, you know, made the connection.”

He pursed his lips.

Taking a breath, he looked at Elliot and said, “So now what?”

Elliot flipped his hand over in defeat. “Maybe you look at the reason you’re self-conscious about having the type of sex you want with him. Did he ask for something?”

“No. H-he doesn’t do that.”

Elliot made a face. “Sounds boring. He’s into plain ol’ vanilla just like you, huh?”

“He’s into sex, period. And call it boring, but I’ve never had it—” He took a breath and stopped talking, his toes curling in his Oxfords. “It’s alway been perfect,” he finally said.

“Surely not always,” Elliot drawled.

“Pretty much always.”

Elliot rolled his eyes. “Bullshit.”

“I swear to you. Whatever that chemistry is, we nail it every time. Sometimes I have to pretend to be asleep or, you know, act like I’m too busy with paperwork, just to get a break.”

Elliot stared at him. “I hate you so much right now.”

He made to pick up, then left his flatbread where it was. He frowned. “And you’re not being of any help right now.”

“So if it’s great, what’s the problem?”

“The problem…” he said, tracing the design on his paper cup. “The problem is that I’m—”

Then he stopped talking. Realization had dawned on him like an shining star.

He raised his eyes to Elliot’s brown ones, which were moving incrementally over his face.

“Yes,” Elliot said encouragingly.

“I-I think I’m—”

But he found he couldn’t say it.

“Into kink?” Elliot supplied.

He stared at Elliot as if he was seeing him for the first time.

Elliot shrugged. “Everyone is, on some level. And you especially with your love of men in sports uniforms. And notice I didn’t say dumb or jock, because that would be uncalled for.”

“I-I—”

“And you have to question why so many men you dated wanted to go in certain directions with you. You probably give off vibes. It’s not a big deal, it’s just, now you’re starting to open up to him.”

“But, honestly, I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with anything. Why don’t I just—tell him what I want?”

“I have no idea,” Elliot conceded. “What is it about yourself you don’t want him to see?”

He snorted, drawing his brows. “Are you kidding?” he said. “What about me _hasn’t_ he seen, good _and_ bad? Half the time I’m amazed he doesn’t—”

Having picked up his flatbread, he stopped moving with it halfway up to his mouth. He lowered it and looked at Elliot.

“Run that by me one more time?”

“What,” Elliot repeated. “Is it, about yourself, that don’t you want him, to see? ’Cause lemme tell ya, if you go there, he’ll be seeing all’a ya. It’s either you don’t give a shit what he sees or there’s got to be a lot of trust.”

“But—is that what you’ve been saying in all this talk about sexual intimacy? That it’ll let him see _all_ of me?”

Elliot sighed and briefly closed his eyes. “I did say we’d need illustrations.”

He sat back in astonishment. What craziness. 

All the pieces from that first week after Sean’s training camp to his feelings in Oakland came flying at him. He trusted Sean with his life. He already knew there wasn’t a more _right_ person with whom to finally open himself like this. So what, really, was the problem?

In a daze, he looked around the deli at the confection of people, suddenly seeing for the first time the wonderful diversity of being fully human.

What was it about himself didn’t he want Sean to see?

Why, nothing at all.

~*~

He had finished wrapping his wrist for morning practice and was shutting his locker door when he started getting a funny feeling inside him. 

A weird, happy one, seeming to come from nowhere.

Briefly glancing around the locker room, he wondered what might be causing it. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary from his teammates getting ready around him, he prepared to close his locker, when suddenly his phone trilled with an incoming text.

On any other occasion he would have headed out to practice and left it for later. But something prompted him to look at it now, so he reached inside the locker and picked up the phone. 

The text was from Holden.

He read the words on the screen and went hot all over.

It said simply: _Oakland was nice._

It had been six days since. He could almost pat himself on the back for how good he had been in not letting the silence worry him.

Composedly unlocking the phone, he was mindful not to act noticeably odd in the still-occupied locker room.

He tapped on the reply button and typed:

_YOU’RE nice._

He got a smiley face in return. Then:

_I’d like to do that again soon._

He stared at the message while his breathing changed, just as another one slipped under it:

_That, and more._

He licked his lip, turning to face inside the locker. He caressed the screen with his thumb, then held the phone steady and typed:

_I’m at your service._

The phone went silent after that. But the stage had been set.

~*~

The team was going through security for private flights at San Diego airport when Holden’s next text came in.

It was Saturday, the day before the Ravens game, and the text said that Holden would see him in Baltimore… and for him to bring his practice jersey… and his football pants.

He stared at the words, feeling like the cat that had finally found the cream, and threw his head back and howled at the ceiling.

A few of the guys chuckled, and Vance, who was hauling luggage off the X-ray machine belt ahead of him, glanced around at him and started laughing.

~*~

At 11:30 p.m. that Saturday he stepped out of the bathroom at the InterContinental in Baltimore wearing a freshly laundered football practice outfit and very lose morals.

He’d cheated and stored the outfit with his football uniforms because the uniforms always smelled like fresh cut grass, knowing fully that the smell was guaranteed to drive Holden wild. 

He dropped his gym bag by the door and resisted the urge to kick it out of the way. That level of obvious desperation wouldn’t do much to help Holden’s present state of mind. 

Straightening, he eyed Holden, who was standing by the bed looking anywhere but at him. Holden was quite occupied with patting down his jacket pockets, ostensibly looking for something. His usual pluck, perhaps. 

He honestly couldn’t fathom why Holden was being self-conscious about his interesting but completely obvious sexual fantasies. Everybody had them, and all _Holden_ had to do was tell him where to stand.

He leaned against the door jamb and waited.

Holden finally dropped his hands, then stood staring across the room at him. Demurely, he locked eyes with him and didn’t let his gaze an inch downward.

“Are you hungry?” Holden asked.

He raised a slow eyebrow.

Holden immediately squeezed shut his eyes.

“That’s not what I meant. What I meant was—” His hand came up. “No, it’s what I meant. Just not—”

He left the doorway and walked until he could slip his arm around Holden’s waist. Holden stood as still as a board.

He understood. He did know how close to home this particular fantasy was to Holden, so he kept a tight hold on him, holding him close, and didn’t say anything except to make a point of breathing on him.

Holden squinted one eye up at him. “Can we skip this one?”

“Not on your life. You _owe_ me this one.”

Holden lowered his gaze down to somewhere over his shoulder, toward the bathroom door.

But he was well past backing down by now, not about to let either of them walk away from something that was promising to be nothing but good. Tightening his arms, he kept his eyes on Holden’s wary gaze. Holden’s look reminded him so much of that morning at the beginning of August, the start of this whole thing, that he couldn’t help but feel that this was right.

“Do you think,” he asked slowly, keeping his voice low. “I busted by chops becoming pro quarterback just so I could win championship rings? Uh-uh. I’ve waited my whole life to get caught between a sex-crazed fan and the locker room door.”

That got him a smile.

Holden tentatively touched his navy jersey while he lowered his mouth to Holden’s ear.

“Show me what you’d like to do to this QB, fanboy.”

That got him some blistering mouth-to-mouth.

Breathing deeply around the kiss, he opened his eyes to see Holden’s eyes flying again and again toward the wall. With his hands intentionally lightly on Holden’s waist, he moaned ever so softly and relaxed against Holden. It had the desired effect and had Holden gently pushing him toward the wall before he was sure Holden knew what he was doing. He went, pulling Holden with him, until his back touched the wall.

He’d thought up against the wall meant up against the wall. Especially since Holden had slowed to let him reach it first. But Holden only took him by the arm, his other hand sinking into the back of his head. He crushed a twinge of disappointment.

He understood what he was supposed to play. The strange quarterback in the locker room. Coming this close to the object of fantasy. Touching it. With permission for exploration. An unexpected moment in real life, incredible that it was happening. 

But there was more to be had here. The full scene to be played. But not necessarily tonight. Holden wasn’t going to explore his fetish of wanting to fuck the quarterback up against the wall. Because at this point he didn’t know he had it.

But that, too, was coming.

~*~

And so the floodgates opened.

The night before the Dolphins game he got to Holden’s suite at the Hard Rock Hotel in Miami under cover of night and through the hotel service elevator. Inside the lobby, lining the street in front of the hotel as well, were crowds of football fans, here for the Sunday game the following day.

But remaining very still behind the assistant manager who was taking him up, his eyes were on the floor numbers lighting up on the wall panel, his mind on what Holden was going to show him tonight. He muttered something inarticulate to the manager and made his way down the hall to the suite door.

Once he closed the door, Holden called, “In here,” and he strode through the living room and almost crashed into him at the bedroom door. 

Behind Holden, he saw a heap of blankets on the floor where Holden had pulled them off the bed. They immediately began undressing each other, and in short order he was on his back on the floor, a trail of clothing the only proof that he had only moments ago been dressed.

Holden sat astride his chest, tall and beautiful and naked on top of him, his cock in his hand and an engrossed expression on his face. Staring down at him with glowing eyes as if he didn’t know where to start taking him apart.

In a breathless rush, Holden explained to him what he wanted to do, and that he hoped he wouldn’t think it weird or uncomfortable but that if he did he should let him know and he would immediately stop. Or that he would try something else. But that he ought to remember that he only had to say “Stop, stop—”

“That sounds a little too close to _don’t_ stop,” he said tightly.

He had his hands on Holden’s thighs, kneading his shaking fingers into them, trying not to buck his hips. Trying not to call the play.

After last week with his training outfit, he had spent a week relearning self control. He could tell that this whole exploration thing was going to be rough and unpolished and that he was going to be the one to have to exercise patience. He really didn’t think Holden had thought any of it through except that he wanted to do things.

“You think I should think of something else?” Holden asked of his chosen “safe” word. A flush was burning up Holden’s face. He didn’t seem to know a thing about safe words. 

Holden squeezed himself slightly, and he moaned under his breath and wanted more than life itself to have that cock in his mouth.

“You’re good,” he said, clenching his jaw.

“Okay,” Holden said, moving down his body, until his ass sitting warmly, horrible perfectly on his cock. “You’re not allowed to touch…”

He was nodding, although Holden wasn’t waiting for a response as his eyes traveled the width of his chest.

“Don’t touch,” Holden repeated, his voice firm but rough like he had never used it before. “You have to keep your hands on me no matter what.”

He nodded, working his hands along the backs of Holden’s thighs.

“Say yes,” Holden said.

“Yes,” he breathed.

“Okay. B-but— is it okay that I’m—”

He gritted his teeth. “Sweetheart…”

Holden nodded and slid off his body, to one side, his knee remaining on his chest as his hand tangled wildly in his hair. His hand pulled. Then Holden set to work.

He watched, lying completely still, his head almost splitting from heat and lust. Holden didn’t seem to be aware that he was there any longer, one thigh across his chest while he touched and caressed him everywhere he could reach him, but completely ignoring his cock and was nearly drugging him with desperation.

When streaks of come started hitting his chest he was groaning and ignoring his own throbbing cock as well, as he slid out his tongue and simply begged for it.

Holden obliged him.

~*~

On October 5th when they played the Pittsburgh Steelers, their nemesis from last postseason, it was a fight to the finish in triple overtime. 

Though they lost to the Steelers dreaded defensive line, commentary following the game cut them tons of slack on account of the Steelers defensive line being the best in the league.

On October _4th,_ the night before the game, in a suite at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh, Holden had slid off his tie and had indicated that he blindfold him.

Seated against the wall in the midst of blankets and pillows, Holden’s eyes were a melting blue he was falling head-first into. Being only their third attempt at exploring this thing that Holden had set loose on them, he had expected more hesitancy. But true to form, Holden had ditched that and wasn’t going small. Staring at him now, he understood that the anonymity of hotel rooms was the perfect setting.

And even knowing it had been coming, it was still beautiful to watch—a sublime unfolding of Holden’s psyche. A revelation of so many little things he had thought he understood but hadn’t really a clue about. Seeing up close what he had come to think of as Holden’s intermittent display of sexual skill having nothing whatsoever to do with Holden’s enthusiasm and… imagination.

On his knees before him, he bent over and kissed Holden thoroughly on the mouth, roughly, deeply, making sure he could feel Holden trembling faintly before pulling back. Then he unfurled the tie. 

He let it dangle, then caught and trapped it between his index and middle fingers and pulled on it, tight and slow.

He watched Holden grow hard, his eyes a pair of blue flames.

Holden was still partially clothed. Which parts, however, a visual he was going to save for later.

He bent over, breathing harshly into Holden’s ear as he applied the blindfold. Holden gasped audibly, running his hands all over his back, leaving hot imprints on his torso.

He pulled back so he could see Holden’s face. “Too tight?”

Holden surged to his knees and wrapped him in a tight embrace, then began smothering him with panting kisses.

“Relax,” he whispered around a trembling breath, deciding he should take control of the situation before he got his eye put out. And because by now he knew exactly what to do, he dragged his mouth across the side of Holden’s face to his ear and whispered, “It’s just you and me, sweetheart. Everyone’s left the building.”

He said it in a rough, take-charge voice that instantly shorted Holden’s breathing, left him breathing so hard he was worried this wouldn’t last long. He slipped his hand underneath Holden’s shirttails and fondled him.

Holden blurted some really dirty things.

He pulled back, staring, glad that with the blindfold on Holden couldn’t see the expression on his face.

Holden licked his open, panting mouth, his hands running all over him. He wanted more of this. Pushing open Holden’s unbuttoned shirt, he dipped his head and sucked on one nipple, insistently, beading it softly into his mouth. He matched what the tip of his tongue was doing with what the pad of his thumb was doing under Holden’s shirt.

Holden grew so agitated, grew so hard that he became quite sure this particular fantasy, a fantasy entailing that he had messed up somewhere and was being deprived of full participation, thus the blindfold, wasn’t going to last long.

He was right about that, wrong about who. As blindfolded on the floor, trapped between his body and the wall, Holden suddenly let out a torrent of the filthiest things he had ever heard.

Holden was on his side, his arm stretched behind him and locked around his thigh, and he was grabbing the edge of the wall for leverage. He was loving the feel of Holden pushing against his body, Holden arching his body so perfectly, knowing just how to take his hard thrusting effortlessly. And when he crowded him some more and the weakly moaned words started pouring out, it was like getting his accelerator stepped on too fast.

Holden called him a hot, dirty name, and it was the shortest, hottest sex he had ever had.

His cock spasmed and spurted, and he was ejaculating haltingly, out of control.

Holden groaned, his voice full of disappointment, twisting toward him with his fingers digging into his ass.

He bent forward, ran his tongue over the blindfold, and wasn’t even close to being done.

Reaching around, he cupped Holden’s balls, making him shudder and push back against him. His cock pulsed and Holden groaned in relief. They began kissing.

~*~

On Coronado Island during bye-week, he got a clean shaving.

And no, it wasn’t what he had been thinking, either.

It was the one week in the season during which the team wasn’t scheduled to play. Holden came down to San Diego on a Tuesday, and they drove down across the bridge to the island resort off the bay where they spent three nights in an expansive suite at the complex. He remembered Holden coming down and he remembered the drive, but only in the way you remembered a beautiful dream.

They did the shaving in the bathtub in the middle of the second day, with him holding very, very still.

He didn’t twitch, didn’t even breathe, half terrified of what might happen if Holden experienced a sudden moment of clumsiness… and yet was so erect he was leaking like a busted pipe.

His cock had to have a death wish fetish he didn’t know about.

But staring down at Holden’s concentrating features, he thought he might be the luckiest man alive. 

Holden halted and looked up from between his legs, the razor carefully aloft in his hand, a serene smile accompanying his glinting eyes.

“You’re going to hate life when this starts growing back,” his sweetheart said to him.

“But I’ll be thinkin’ about you the whole time,” he replied.

He didn’t understand any of what was going on except that Holden had suddenly turned kinky on him.

It was heaven.

Holden lowered his eyes back to his task, wetting his lips and staring at his happy, clearly insane sexual organ. Holden was shaving him with a gel, but the way it was going down there, Holden really didn’t need extra lubricant.

“Do you want me to— to s-suck you off?”

He turned and looked at the small bag of supplies lying half-open on the bathroom floor.

“What d’you have in there?”

“Maple syrup and whipped cream.”

What else.

He returned his gaze, to see Holden’s eyes go from merely excited to off-the-charts aroused.

He shifted, getting a little more comfortable on the bathtub cushion.

“Sweetheart, I’ll wait.”

Holden carefully took the razor, wet his lips again and slowly scraped. 

Letting his head fall back against the bath pillow, he gritted his teeth. It was exquisite. The millions of tiny electric shocks zapping all his nerve endings. He felt his cock pull tight and squeeze out another bead, and he silently assured it he understood. 

Holden wet his hand, the short ripple in the bathwater sounding so practical in contrast to his soft panting. Then the minute sound of the gel being pumped. Then Holden’s cool hand gently cupping him, smearing softly all over his crotch and inner thighs. 

He could only stare as Holden leaned forward, kissed the wet hair on his chest, licked softly at his nipples, before lowering himself back to the water, resuming his task. He held the sight in his head for a moment, then closed his eyes and let out a silent _Fuck_ at the ceiling.

~*~

In Denver, the night before they lost 24-17 to the Broncos, Holden sat across from him at the Teatro Hotel, a breathtaking view of the Rocky Mountains looming in the picture windows behind him, and watched him give a sex show.

It had never crossed his mind that just because he couldn’t travel with anything in his bag that would raise eyebrows at security, or worse yet end up in the news, it didn’t mean Holden couldn’t pick up the slack at a local shop.

He had to admit Holden had great taste in sex toys.

And since he himself had never felt an ounce of self-consciousness about sex, he got comfortable on the couch and gave his guy exactly what he wanted to see. What he had paid good money to see.

The coffee table and an ottoman served as foot rests for his heels. The three other toys he had intentionally placed on the ottoman served as reminder for the rest of the night. The one inside him served as the appetizing opener.

When he was done and feeling really fucking good, he laid there gasping in repletion, a sheen of sweat drying off his body.

Across the room, Holden sat staring as though he had been bludgeoned. Or that a bludgeoning was the nicest thing anyone could do for him at that moment.

He lifted a hand and waved weakly for him to come over. Holden came quickly, gluing to him and kissing him like he was the proudest partner in the world. He kissed him weakly, and Holden showered him with adoration, coaxing him back to life.

~*~

Then Holden asked to meet during the week at the Fairmont in Newport Beach.

Newport was halfway between L.A. and San Diego, and perfect in terms of driving time for a weekday. When he entered the suite that Wednesday night, Holden was waiting for him by the door.

Holden took his hand, then cupped his jaw and pecked his cheek, planting the kiss softly.

He sank his hand into Holden’s trousers pocket and pulled him closer, groaning when Holden pushed into his hip, letting him know he was ready.

Dreamily, he wondered what it was going to be tonight, what aspect of the mental geography he was about to be privy to.

Holden began walking him backward toward an armchair in the middle of the room, at which Holden sat and faintly told him to get naked.

Standing back, he waited until Holden was fully situated. Then with his eyes on him, he slowly took off his belt.

He stripped his jersey.

Then he took off his jeans, shoving them off along with his briefs.

He stood with his legs spread, and observation in his eyes, and saw exactly what it was his fiancé wanted to explore tonight. Holden was minutely spreading his legs, unconsciously summoning him.

He moved forward and straddled Holden, his cock throbbing and already wanting action at its own timeframes.

Holden spread his hands, spanning his waist, then slid them down to firmly take hold of his ass. He forward rocked, flushing while Holden watched his face, so turned on he couldn’t think of what came next.

“Who’s my big boy?” Holden whispered softly, kneading his ass, staring at his flush.

To his surprise he went weak, feeling Holden’s cock, still trapped inside his trousers, getting hard underneath him. Holden pressed and squeezed him, his serious and caring.

He felt vulnerable, kept. It was new, and so intimate all he could do was sit there blushing. Holden brought his hand forward and smoothed it over the fine hairs that were starting to grow back in his crotch.

“How’s that regrowth treating you?” Holden asked, in a faintly teasing undertone.

He closed his eyes, lowering his head and trying to think of less arousing things than straddling Holden naked while Holden sat there fully clothed, stroking his shaved crotch. Something less arousing than the way skin sensitivity took on a whole new meaning after a clean shave. Though from the stimulation it had gotten the day Holden had done it, he was surprised it hadn’t all grown back overnight.

Holden slowed his hand, hesitating, perhaps seeing his less than in control state, and withdrew it. Reaching for Holden’s zipper, he stopped and waited for instructions when Holden shook his head.

“We’re gonna leave it on,” Holden said quietly. Then his gaze dropped to his naked cock. “And you’re gonna have to be careful,” Holden whispered, raising his eyes to him. “But I want you to ride me.”

Somehow, he didn’t just start rocking.

By now, he’d gotten the drift of it. This fantasy roleplaying thing, and Holden’s in particular. Tonight, it was going to be like this. It didn’t take rocket science to figure out why he was sitting naked and in his boyfriend’s lap, and why Holden was still fully dressed and in his work clothes.

Holden had not only his jacket on, but his trousers, vest and tie, his polished black shoes, as well as his watch and silver bracelet. Not to mention, his engagement ring. Holden was ready to play.

Spreading his thighs a little, he let his full body weight settle on Holden, shifting minutely. He listened to the soft, distraught breaths Holden made as Holden gently cupped his ass while he stared down at both their cocks.

“Is this good, sweetheart?” he asked in a low voice. “Or am I too heavy for you?”

“We should take it slow,” Holden said in a hoarse voice, by way of a response.

He smiled lopsidedly at the crown of Holden’s head. If he knew anything about sexual kinks, it was that anticipation was ninety percent the pleasure.

So he shifted ever so slightly, as if trying to find a better way to feel his cock against his ass, and trailed his thumb over his jaw. He brought it up to his lower lip, playing keep away for scalding moments while Holden kept opening his mouth as if to suck in his thumb, and he kept moving it away.

Eventually Holden made a quiet sound, as if he was in pain, and he slid his thumb into his mouth, and had to grip the chair as Holden suddenly sucked it in and pushed him backwards in one motion, making him slide over the ridge of his cock.

The motion, with his weight, must have all but scraped the come out of Holden, and from the glazed loo in Holden’s eyes he might just be right. 

He circled an arm around Holden’s shoulder and gripped the back of the chair, watching as Holden sucked his thumb, practically lifting him off the chair as he rocked him, let his cock take the brunt of his weight.

And feeling the serrated length of Holden’s zipper under its strip of cloth beneath him, he was incredibly, perversely turned on. Holden hissed between his teeth for him to do it harder. He gripped the back of the chair and ground down harder. Holden gasped softly. He pushed his cock against the neat stitches of his vest.

They were going to make a fucking mess.

~*~


	7. Chapter 7

“Sean! How would you describe your return to football after being dropped by the Chargers, coming out as the first gay player in the NFL, and getting reinstated at a higher salary?”

He grinned foolishly at the ABC Sports reporter. “Exhilarating!”

They had just won their second game of the season against the Raiders. The screams of the hometown fans and the adrenaline rush were enough to make him high, even if the unbelievable Wednesday night he had spent with Holden already hadn’t.

“Would you say you’ve put your problems behind you and are ready to take up the challenge of leading your team to the playoffs?”

He grinned down at the guy. These were all softball questions for his comeback, and he appreciated it.

Lifting a finger, he said loudly into the camera, “Here at the Chargers we take it one victory at a time!”

His teammates hollered and slapped him passing behind him, and he quickly patted the reporter as he got dragged laughing all the way into the locker rooms.

If you asked him, the San Diego Chargers needed to put Holden on the payroll.

~*~

“Sean,what do _you_ want?”

For long seconds he couldn’t speak. Holden asked the question, the words sinking softly into his chest hair. 

But he was buoyant on the moment, on the hour, and on the night, and he didn’t want any words to spoil the mood.

Tonight they were in his townhouse in San Diego and it was quiet, night lights twinkling in the distance, the soft sounds of the Pacific gently crashing out his love.

It was just past one a.m. and everything in life was perfect.

“Sean?”

“What’d you mean?” he asked softly, reluctantly.

Holden pushed up on an elbow to stare down at him, his swatch of wayward hair immediately spilling over his forehead.

He lifted a hand and pushed it off Holden’s forehead, mesmerized by how it behaved itself during the day, but then at night, alone with him…

He smiled. Holden’s hair liked him.

“I mean,” Holden said, still staring down at him. “What’s _your_ fantasy?”

He was silent for a moment.

“Uh...” he said, trying to rouse his brain. “You mean besides having sex with you whenever I want even though it’s football season?”

Holden laid back down. “I’m being serious.”

He blinked at the ceiling. So was he.

“I don’t mean just about sex,” Holden said after a brief silence. “I mean that…everyone has fantasies. I’m showing you mine, maybe sometime… we can do one of yours.”

“Get up, sweetheart. Look at me.”

He waited until Holden had propped himself back up and was once again staring down at him.

Then, ignoring Holden’s less than accommodating look, he put his hand against his cheek and caught his eyes, holding them until he was sure Holden was paying him full attention.

“ _This_ is my fantasy,” he said.

_I’m on the road and you’re here with me._

But for whatever reason, he didn’t say it.

Holden’s eyes searched his, looking somewhere for the whole truth he presumed, and so he simply waited. He saw it when Holden finally found it and let go of his cynicism.

Holden reached down, lifted his hand, palm up, and pressed to his lips.

He watched Holden do it, then closed his eyes. For the first time in a long time, since he first thought of them being separated at his lunch with Paula in fact, he felt at peace.

~*~

Okay, so he had always known that Sean would turn him into a sex addict. He didn’t think he’d been fooling anyone but himself on that score. 

It was probably why he had initially resisted Sean so strongly from the start, a tug of sensation he had never wanted to give into from the moment he had found out what Sean did for a living.

But now he thought about all the times he had snuck magazines of Sean's photoshoots into his very private spaces, even when he had been in perfectly serviceable relationships. 

He recalled all those afternoons he had spent in his office, banning himself from daydreaming about the quarterback for the San Diego Chargers. Like some kind of loser football fan, imagining that he had lost his way in the locker rooms and had had to stop and ask for directions…

Now it was all out of his head, out on the table.

He’d not only turned into one of those guys you ran into in restaurants, who entered the men’s room after you and you instantly knew you were in for some very inappropriate behavior, but sex was all his could think about.

What he hadn’t imagined, what he really couldn’t have predicted, was how much he would like it.

He _loved_ it.

He felt freed, alive… Himself.

He had discovered, in pursing his deepest sexual desires, that not only wasn’t he the emotionally shallow person he had forever feared himself to be, he was actually a person capable of deep sexual love with just one guy. _His_ guy.

Even his father could see the change in him.

Alastair was giving him concerned and confused looks from across the museum floor, his obvious thoughts commingling at son’s exuberant laughter.

The organizers of the L.A. County Museum of Art’s midnight fundraiser were having a hard time keeping Alastair’s full attention, and he found it very amusing.

Elliot, seeing his unstoppable mood and presumably understanding the reason, started making a point of shooing away some of the guys they knew from before, whose first priority would not be to the seriousness of his engagement.

The poor guys were giving Elliot baffled looks, and Elliot was eating the whole thing up, creating drama where there was none to be had, and he merely smiled, shrugged, and pretended to be just as thwarted.

Laughing happily, he threw his arms around his friends and posed as camera flashes went off. Flushed on mocha martinis and surrounded by good friends, he couldn’t have masked how good he felt if his life depended on it. He had found himself.

~*~

So, oddly enough, as these things sometimes went, the encounter that messed him up wasn’t in the playing out of a fantasy.

Or maybe it was.

Maybe Holden had been listening more closely than he had imagined that night in Baltimore when Holden had asked him what he wanted. It could also have been that they were at the Raphael Hotel in Kansas City, and it had already filled his head with old-world romance and pampering. 

Whatever it was, Holden had him lying on his back and was kissing him. That was all.

He was melting under an assault so good, so perfect that he was motionless, slowly disintegrating on gusts of warm currents.

Holden was lying on top of him, his leg draped over him and his hands locking him to the bed by his biceps. And he was slow-kissing him.

Holden had always been a good kisser, but now it was different, the passivity long gone. Holden stroked his nipples, his neck, then smoothed his fingers down to his wet cock, rubbing it where it lay obediently against the back of his outstretched thigh. Then he would return his fingers to the crown of his head where he fisted his hair, all while never breaking the kiss.

All of it seemed designed to send him just one signal: that he was in good hands.

Holden slowed the kiss, lifting his mouth from his. “I love you,” he whispered, breathing the words into him.

He closed his eyes, sure he was having a perfect dream.

“I’ve always loved you,” Holden went on, moving his swollen lips to the corner of his mouth. He kissed him there. “Through all the others. Only you.”

His breaths were flying out of him. He was alone on a field, watching the most incredible defensive wall come crashing down around him. He squeezed eyes that were already shut.

Holden’s fingers trailed through his hair, before he dropped his head, and he was serenaded with a softer, lingering kiss. “My beautiful, perfect Sean.”

“Open your eyes,” Holden said, when he only laid there taking deep breaths.

He opened his eyes and stared up into dark blue eyes that were finally his.

Holden smiled down at him. His hair fell over his forehead, he pushed it back with a soft laugh and, blushing, whispered, “I am so _fucked,_ ” and that was how he died.

~*~

Oh, _fuck._

He stared in abject horror at what was happening on the field, knowing exactly what it was.

The had tackle hit Sean again, and again Sean went down with a sudden crash.

The Kansas City Chiefs defensive line meanwhile seemed to have smelled blood in the water, their linebackers at Sean within fractions of the ball being snapped. Sean was hit square in the chest. And for the fifth time in as many minutes—it was only the first quarter—Sean buckled like a rag doll.

The hits weren’t the problem. Quarterbacks were built to take hits, and in pro football the hits came plenty. 

But the quarterback wasn’t supposed to be holding the ball when that happened.

The ball went flying. Players from both teams pounced on it, burying Sean and the linesman that had taken him down under a heap of bodies.

He stared, speechless.

And yet somehow, none of it was a surprise.

Because somewhere deep inside him he had known, had secretly _known,_ that nothing good could come of this!

He was in the Fox Sports VIP box, watching the one Sunday game for which he had decided to stay after his Saturday night visit, and his heart was pounding so hard he could feel it at his throat.

Sitting there trying to not show any reaction had to have been one of the most out-of-body experiences he had ever had. But he didn’t so much as blink. Paula was in the box with him and besides her more eyes than he cared to calculate. It was taking every ounce of his willpower but he didn’t so much as twitch.

And Sean still couldn’t keep a hold of the ball.

It seemed like his fingers were covered in butter and no matter how hard he grasped, the slightest tap sent the ball flying out of his hands.

_This can’t be happening,_ he cried silently. But his mind frantically yelled back that it was.

And then he realized it wasn’t his mind yelling, it was the game’s announcers… both of whom were being drowned out by the enraged howls of the fans.

Sean’s teammates were looking about them in confusion at each play, stunned to find the ball not downfield where their reliable-as-clockwork quarterback was guaranteed to put it almost every time, but instead somewhere around their feet and being scrambled for.

After the sixth sack—and he was certain the head coach let the excruciating spectacle go on for that long because it was just that hard to believe—the referee blew a whistle and Sean was pulled off the field.

The crowd booed mercilessly.

Even before Sean was done crossing to the Chargers sideline the team’s medical crew were rushing him, checking his hand, wrist, and elbows for injury. Sean was panting and shaking his head, indicating that nothing was wrong.

Nothing was wrong?

_You’re busted because of me!_

He realized he was sitting forward. He glanced around and thanked God Paula and everyone else were peering down to see what was going on with Sean.

He sat back, carefully, and utterly confused.

Sean had been fine for two whole months. Why hadn’t he…

What had happened?

He stayed through the rest of the game, unwilling to get up and leave at a time like this.

The coach put Sean back into the game in the third quarter but within two minutes the same thing was happening, and Sean was off the field for good.

With the Chargers down by one terrible point to equalize in the fourth quarter, there was no salvaging the game after that.

He stood up as the final whistle was blown, making a production of buttoning up his jacket.

Paula cordially said goodbye as she left, but for the first time since he’d met Sean, he finally understood what kind of pressure Sean was about to face.

~*~

Wow, was he going to get it.

It was Monday morning and they were back in San Diego. And he was about to face the music.

He stood at Coach Turner’s door dealing with that for a moment.

This morning had come like a brutal hangover, though Sunday afternoon having been no fun in the lockers. His teammates’ silence spoke more to their confusion than even their disappointment, and it did so much more than words could have conveyed.

He took a breath and let it out, then grasped the door handle and opened the door and walked slowly into Coach Turner’s office.

All the coaches were there. Every last one of them, including the general manager and the team owner. In particular he avoided the gaze of Ramsdell, the quarterback coach and someone who had always been a tireless champion for his cause.

He nodded to the room at large as he pushed his bag toward his back, adjusting the strap across his chest as he sat down.

It was Coach Turner who led the inquiry.

He listened carefully to what they were saying, facing it with as much dignity as he could manage. He was grateful that none of them made a point of maintaining eye contact or trying to refer to “whatever his problem might be” by name, even though Ramsdell, at least, knew that Holden had been a constant on the road trips.

Yeah, he sure as fuck knew what was happening to him.

Knew it before Coach Turner had pulled him off the field and way before Holden had called him after the game.

Holden hadn’t said much except that he was still in town if he needed to talk. He had taken him up on it, but had gone back to the Raphael and just fallen asleep in Holden’s arms.

Coach kept it short; nothing much needed to be said anyway other than he needed to focus. He needed to not let his teammates down again, and for him to get his head back in the game. They told him to take the day off.

He shook Coach’s hand as well as the team owner’s hands when he got up, and he quickly left the room.

~*~

“Paula, you can’t be serious!”

“Oh, I’m pretty fucking serious.”

“I can’t not see him until the season is over, that’s completely unnecessary, not to mention, not gonna happen! It’s barely November for God’s sake and he’s my fiancé!”

“I’ll tell you what’s not going to happen, Sean,” Paula replied, no change in her tone. “You’re not going to fuck up what so far has been a success story. You do whatever you like during the offseason, but once August rolls around I _own_ you. Not the team, not your family, not your fiancé. _I_ do. I make decisions based on your career needs. I keep telling you, I don’t collect ten percent for nothing. Fire me or keep me, that’s up to you. But as long as you have me for your agent, you do what I tell you to do, and you do it promptly. And I am telling you that you cannot see him until January.”

A hard silence fell on the heels of her words.

He stared at the far wall. The locker rooms were silent and empty.

And cold as fuck.

“Am I fired?”

“Paula…” he groaned.

“Okay then, I consider this issue resolved.”

He slowly turned and pressed his forehead into the wall. “This can’t be happening,” he moaned. “Not right now.”

“Why? What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

And say what? That he had made some kind of breakthrough and a connection with his partner, and of all the times in the world to be pulled apart, _this was not it?_

“Sean?”

“Paula, I gotta go.”

“Sean, are we on the same page?”

“Yeah, we are, Paula.”

He ended the call. But before he could text Holden. he saw he had two voicemails, one from his sister and the other from his dad.

He lowered the phone and took a breath.

His family generally didn’t talk directly to him during the season, and especially not after a bad game, as early on in his career they had decided that it seemed to benefit him more when he listened to their recorded messages of encouragement rather than them trying to talk him through it.

He tapped the voicemail icon then raised the phone to his ear and listened to their messages now, feeling even more dismal and embarrassed as they reminded him not to focus on one bad game or let the negativity distract him from what he had to do next Sunday.

He disconnected, slipping the phone into its slot on the strap of his duffle.

If only it were about the negativity.

Tomorrow was Tuesday-off, and usually it meant spending a day with teammates, maintaining whatever state of mind was needed to get them through the rest of the week. This week they had set up a fishing trip on Vance’s yacht.

Heading out to the parking lot, he sent Vance a text saying he wouldn’t make it, and instead hopped into his Navigator. He drove straight to L.A.

~*~


	8. Chapter 8

“Holden, _please._ ”

“Sean, no.”

“ _Please,_ sweetheart.”

” _Nooo!_ ”

Holden was choking on his laughter, even though he wasn’t smiling at all.

He had spent the entire drive up going over what he was going to say to Holden, and then it had turned out Holden had been in Cabo San Luca of all places.

Standing in the parking garage of Holden’s office building with his phone to his ear, he had like an idiot listening to Holden laughing with a mixture of flattery and disbelief, telling him that his spontaneity had been “very sweet.”

So all of Monday he had steamed in his house in Malibu, and Tuesday morning Holden had finally retuned, only to tell him that he had to go back down to San Diego as soon as possible, and that he wasn’t even allowed to stay the night.

“Paula said it’s interfering with your game!” Holden now cried, trying to talk around his laughter. He just didn’t see what was so amusing.

“Paula’s full of shit.”

“No, she’s _not._ ”

~*~

He had no idea how Sean could make him laugh so much when he was being completely serious.

“Sean, no!” he tried shouting, but not very successfully, and ended up pushing back as hard as he could to get Sean’s tightening arms to loosen from around him. Sean had impatiently been listening after he had entered his condo, and at some point while he had turned from him in making his point about him having to leave, had encircled him in his arms from behind, his legs on either side of him so he couldn’t escape.

“Holden, c’mon,” Sean groaned.

“Stop it!” he cried, praying he wouldn’t lose his resolve. “I don’t think this is a good idea!”

“Who’s thinking?”

“That’s the problem!”

Struggling for even a fraction of space, he managed to turn around and face Sean, though he was forced by Sean’s arms around him to stay close as was possible for two human bodies.

Sean stopped tightening his arms, slackening them enough to just hold him very close, and stood staring at him with a forlorn expression, his light blue, oh so pretty eyes sweeping across his face.

_Uuugh,_ this was going to be hard.

Gently placing a hand on his beard, he caught and held those sad eyes. “Sean,” he said softly. “You suck after we’ve been together.”

“Bullshit,” Sean muttered, his tone belying his words. “I had a bad game is all. It happens.”

“Not to you.” And soothingly, hopefully hypnotically, he caressed his beard. “You’re in the top five least sacked quarterbacks in the NFL, higher if you count post-season games, and from just that last game, you’re on track to lose that distinction.”

Sean’s arms slacked around him even more, his expression becoming more depressed. “I used to think it was hot that you knew my stats.”

“It’s not a joke, Sean. Everyone’s talking about it.”

“Everyone’s always talking about something. It’s just the usual crap.”

“Nope. I looked at the previous games from the season so far, and your stats _have_ been down for most of October.” He paused stroking Sean’s face and said, “You’re suppose to be a _sensation._ But now you’re just out there fucking up.”

“Once, Holden. I fucked up once,” Sean said. Then he lifted and dropped his shoulder, though he didn’t unlock his arms from around him. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation about my _sex_ life. There are guys out there having orgies in nightclubs nights before games. What about them?”

He seriously doubted that. “Well, maybe some guys can do it, but you’re not one of them. It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said gently, lowering his hands and running them over Sean’s shoulders.

Then he realized he was about to get derailed by his own thoughts, feeling the hard muscles underneath his hands, and stopped what he was doing.

“I guess you’re just more monogamous than you imagined,” he told Sean, smiling warmly at Sean’s deepening frown. “And right now it look like your only partner has to be football.”

Sean stood there staring at him with sad, puppy eyes.

“Don’t give me that look,” he said firmly, his heart skipping beats. He sighed, shaking clear his head. “Three years together and I just realized you can do that look.”

“Sweetie…”

“Sean, I’m serious.”

“But…it was just getting good.”

“I know,” he said sofly.

They both stood silently for a few moments, accepting their new reality, he supposed.

He grasped Sean’s fingers and Sean immediately squeezed back.

His heart started aching.

“So now what?” Sean finally asked. “We’re… being rationed?”

He stilled, grimacing, realizing that the message hadn’t actually gotten through to Sean.

“What?” Sean asked slowly.

“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” he said gently, ignoring Sean’s darkening face. “I don’t think we can get together again until after the season is over.”

Sean stared at him. “Holden, forget what Paula said, that doesn’t even make sense.”

And when Sean could see by his look that it did make sense to him…

“Holden, are you kidding? I’m not saying we meet every night or— necessarily— _do_ anything, but— it’s only November and the season doesn’t end until January. How can we not be together even once during that time? I-I’ll go nuts.”

”You didn’t for three years.”

“That was before I was getting it steady.”

“You’re getting it too much is the problem.”

“How can _you_ be okay with that?”

“I will be because I have to.”

Long, slow seconds ticked by, in which Sean simply searched his face.

Then Sean closed his eyes. “Holden, I’m going to count to three—”

He laughed and gently pushed Sean by the shoulder, turning him toward the door. “You have to leave, QB.”

Sean didn’t budge. “Holden, I—” 

There was suddenly a different tenor in Sean’s voice.

It sounded oddly like fear.

Sean couldn’t seem to speak.

He was baffled, but mostly amused at how the prospect of being apart for just a few weeks was making Sean so crazy. They’d done it before and it hadn’t brought about the end of the world.

But he kind of understood it. It _had_ been a spectacular twelve weeks.

And from the way his heart was doing flip flops over Sean’s sweet little angst which he would have never seen coming, if he paused now to think about it any more than that there was no telling where they would end up. 

Probably with him bent over his writing desk in about two seconds from now.

He shoved. “It has to be done, Sean.”

Sean slowly turned around and started toward the door.

There, he slipped his arm around Sean’s waist and softly pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, possibly lingering too long savoring the feel of his beard and the smell of his skin for the long, dry spell ahead.

“I’ll be there in spirit every Sunday to cheer you on,” he whispered, then gently pushed Sean out of his penthouse and closed the door on his astonished face.

~*~

With his head pressed into the white front door of his condo, he waited in the silence.

He had been there perhaps two minutes.

Had he once given Sean attitude about having a “stupid” no sex rule? He needed to go back and congratulate the man for having the fibre to see it through.

Karma was a bitch.

His phone suddenly buzzed. He went over to his briefcase and picked it up, dreadfully anticipating the incoming text.

It read: _I can’t believe you just did that! You yelled at me for not having sex with you when we first me,,and we weren’t even dating! Fuck!_

He laughed for a really long time.

~*~

Sean brutalized Philadelphia on the field that Sunday.

He watched the game out of the corner of his eye.

He was having brunch with some potential clients and trying not to look _too_ interested. Which was tricky since he was meant to be interested because they were. But it had to be the right kind of interest, the wining-and-dining your clients kind of interest, not the _groan every time the quarterback gets a closeup_ type of interest.

All eyes in the restaurant were on Sean, the normally sedate upscale crowd at the Gulfstream yelling at the screen.

Even his clients were howling along with the rest of the patrons, either not knowing or caring about his relationship to Sean and speaking freely about his performance.

And Sean was giving them one hell of a show.

To say Sean was doing spectacularly would be somewhat of an understatement.

He hadn’t called, hadn’t responded to all but one of Sean’s texts, and that had been to make sure that Sean understood that he was serious about their new situation.

It seemed Sean finally believed it and it had made him…quite upset.

Sean was leading the offense—he even recognized some of the names of the players on the line from training camp—and would get into position, barking up and down the line. Then the ball would snap and Sean would catch it. And within what seemed like mere fractions of a second the Eagles tackles would have found and taken him down, and Sean would go limp and go down under them. But the ball would have been long gone.

It happened over and over, the drive towards the Eagles end zone relentless and Sean’s focus never flagging.

The crowd was screaming ecstatically and the commentators were doing the same.

It went on astonishingly like that until the third quarter when the Chargers head coach signaled a timeout.

And then Sean was jogging to the sidelines to massive applause, taking his helmet off when he crossed the line and running a hand through his hair. Sean turned around and waved at the stands, then returned a hail of high fives, bear hugs, and slaps on the ass.

He looked away on that last part.

The commentators were breathlessly yelling about what an amazing thing Sean Jackson had done in this matchup, having seen not only the criticisms of last Sunday’s debacle but of his entire off-season, and having raised them.

“Larry,” the other commentator yelled back in agreement. “What an outstanding performance this afternoon from Sean Jackson!”

He smiled and nodded in agreement as the consensus went around the table that the Chargers would definitely see the AFC Championships this season.

What he was trying not to see was Sean lying naked on his couch down in his townhouse. His thighs spread, his hand somewhere around his groin, his eyes on him. Like a fantasy centerfold.

He stopped himself from taking a deep breath and from sighing.

He had had a good run.

He had been brave and had seized the moment when it was upon him, he had taken his sexual maturity into his own hands, and had reaped great rewards for it.

He was happier, more confident in who he was and in what his needs were, and he was closer in his relationship to his future husband for it.

It was more than most people could say, and it was certainly emotional connection on a level his father could never hope to understand. He had done well.

He felt another sigh coming and instead reached for his glass and took a sip of water.

Sean had better appreciate what he was giving up for his career.

~*~

Sean did not.

 

_Continued in Right When It's Right - Part II._


End file.
